Geisha Kowlessar and Rhondor Dowlat
The People’s Partnership Government was slammed by the Opposition yesterday for holding parliamentary sessions in August. The Constitution Amendment Bill and the Procurement Legislation are expected to be debated this month, although Parliament traditionally takes a break during this time. During a press conference at Parliament in Port-of-Spain yesterday, Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley said August was a time when many parliamentarians spent time with their families and went on vacation abroad.
He accused the Government of deliberately not taking a break for August so as to sway people from the Life Sport controversy. “This is purely to change the conversation from the current landslide of scandal the country is embroiled in,” Rowley said. He said as in the case of his colleagues, August was the only time he could spend with his children. “In all my years in the Parliament, the only time I got to spend with my family is the month of August, and to do that you have to leave the country for a period of time.
“If you are here on vacation you will have to be working, because you are available to your constituents. If you want a week or two of quiet time with your family, you plan that in August,” Rowley added. He said this was why Diego Martin North/East MP Colm Imbert was out of the country on vacation with his family. Rowley said according to the standing orders the Parliament would meet if there was an urgent matter to be discussed, but not for “willy-nilly, capricious purposes.
“They are trying to use the Parliament to take egg off their face,” Rowley added.
Breach of standing orders
PNM PRO Faris Al-Rawi meanwhile said the new Standing Orders of the House of Representatives may have been breached by the Government in the process. Speaking with the T&T Guardian in a telephone interview last evening, Al-Rawi said the Government should act with care, caution and respect for the laws of T&T and it should also recognise the importance of the new Standing Orders.
He said the Standing Orders specifically provide for a fixed recess of Parliament, “such that the Parliament is prohibited from sitting in the month of August until the second week of September, unless the House is moved to sit on exceptional and urgent business.” “Standing Order Section 13 specifically set out the mechanisms by which the House should have caused the implementation of the exception to Standing Order 14, the latter Standing Order is the one which constraints sittings during the sixth recess period.”
Al-Rawi said House Speaker Wade Mark would have to have given certification of the exceptional business to be considered in order to sit in August, which he failed to do. “The adjournment to August 11 therefore stands in open breach of the new Standing Orders and it is spectacular that the Government should seek to start the new Parliamentary term by a breach of the new rules of Parliament.”
He called on the Government to explain the haste to introduce the constitutional amendments tabled for debate on August 11 in the face of this breach.
