Opposition Leader Keith Rowley will be investigated by Parliament’s Privileges Committee for alleged contempt of Parliament in connection with the e-mails he produced this week. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday made a request to have Rowley sent before the Privileges team and Speaker Wade Mark subsequently ruled that a prima facie case of contempt had been made out against the Opposition leader.
A three-day debate of Rowley’s no-confidence motion against Persad-Bissessar and the Government ended with a drama-filled final leg in the Parliament yesterday, when Persad-Bissessar climaxed her contribution on the motion by turning the tables on the PNM and calling for Rowley to be sent to the Privileges Committee.
Persad-Bissessar spoke at the end of the debate, after Rowley’s final submission yesterday. The Opposition, however, including their supporters, all got up and walked out of the Chamber when she rose to speak, protesting her action. People’s Partnership MPs yelled after the departing PNM: “Don’t come back...Go!” As a result of the walkout, the PNM was not present to vote on its own motion against the Government and its motion was defeated via a vote of 26 PP members—including Herbert Volney—against it.
There was further drama later into Persad-Bissessar’s contribution when UNC activist Patsy Lezama collapsed in the public gallery (See Page A5). Persad-Bissessar waded into Rowley, denying the PNM’s allegations about the e-mails Rowley had brought to the House and dismissing them a fabrication. “It is a conspiracy of deception, but we deny and refute all allegations about these reprehensible e-mail scripts concocted by a person or persons,” she said.
“Oh, what a tangled web they weave when they conspire to deceive. “In all my years in Parliament I’ve never seen such a wanton abuse of Parliament. I never thought it would come to this with PNM. I ask Dr Rowley to do the right thing having seen all these discrepancies and withdraw his statements and tell the truth. Put your office where your mouth is—tell us the truth!”
Persad-Bissessar said Rowley had moved from his position on Monday about the e-mails to “backing back” yesterday and asking for the material to be investigated. She said he had not taken ownership of the e-mails, had not investigated it nor had he said if he warned the people mentioned in them. She said he had instead now pegged his arguments on the e-mails on the contribution of PP backbencher Herbert Volney, whom Rowley had once criticised and said could not be trusted.
“The Opposition leader is like a man hanging from a cliff by his fingers and he has Vaseline on his fingers,” she said. She said the language in the e-mails were the language of a “raging bull” and a “wajang,” adding it was either the e-mails were true or bogus. If they were true, she said there were penalties for hacking someone’s e-mail, and if they were bogus, there were penalties for making public mischief. She said if it turned out the probe ended up being about Rowley, she trusted he would co-operate.
Persad-Bissessar, who pointed out further discrepancies in the e-mails yesterday, said she was ready to give up her Blackberry phone to the police if they wanted to check it.
She said the Integrity Commission Act—which she cited—did not give it jurisdiction over the probe of criminal charges, as the e-mails alleged. She said the only agency which could cover this was the police, yet Rowley had attacked the police’s capability to handle the matter. She said she was surprised an experienced party leader and politician like Rowley did not know this.
Persad-Bissessar said the police had a cyber-crime unit and access to regional and international partners to probe such matters. The PM said Rowley had also scandalised the office of the President by his statements about that office in connection with the e-mails. She said the past President had written to her twice in December 2012 on the Section 34 issue and she replied to him in December and January 2013.
Persad-Bissessar said Rowley recklessly abused the freedom of speech in the House “when, relying on this plainly fictitious/false documents, he proceeded to level serious allegations of serious/criminal wrongdoing on the part of the Prime Minister and other ministers.”