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Thursday, August 14, 2025

Speaker: No probe into

Rudy’s ‘tearoom assault’

by

2708 days ago
20180317

UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh yes­ter­day lost out on his bid to have Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges team in­ves­ti­gate PNM MP An­tho­ny Gar­cia who In­dars­ingh claimed cursed him in the Par­lia­ment’s tea­room re­cent­ly.

House Speak­er Brigid An­nisette-George said a pri­ma fa­cie case had not been made out to fa­cil­i­tate an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee.

In a let­ter on the mat­ter to the Speak­er yes­ter­day, Cou­va South MP In­dars­ingh said the al­leged in­ci­dent oc­curred in the Par­lia­ment’s tea­room last Fri­day be­fore the Par­lia­ment ses­sion be­gan.

He claimed Gar­cia dis­played “threat­en­ing in­tim­i­dat­ing be­hav­iour” to­wards him and he was ver­bal­ly as­sault­ed by Gar­cia as he dealt with the is­sue of the clo­sure of the Bal­main Pres­by­ter­ian School.

In­dars­ingh said Gar­cia’s threat­en­ing lan­guage and abu­sive be­hav­iour fell be­neath the stan­dard of con­duct for MPs and was “re­gret­ful and rep­re­hen­si­ble.”

But An­nisette-George, in her rul­ing said, “I have read the sub­mis­sion of the Cou­va South MP and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing at­tach­ments. I have al­so not­ed the re­ports on this in­ci­dent that have been pub­lished in the me­dia.”

“I have giv­en se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to this mat­ter. I have al­so care­ful­ly re­viewed the rel­e­vant lit­er­a­ture on cas­es like this. Fur­ther, I have tak­en par­tic­u­lar note of the fact that the Mem­ber for Cou­va South ad­mit­ted in his sub­mis­sion that, with­out hes­i­tance, he re­spond­ed to the Mem­ber for Ari­ma in an ap­pro­pri­ate fash­ion so as to pro­tect him­self.”

“In the cir­cum­stances, I find no pri­ma case of breach of priv­i­lege in this mat­ter,” she said. (GA)


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