Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Par­lia­ment's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee to de­ter­mine whether he mis­led the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in a state­ment made last week rel­a­tive to the UNC's tenure in Gov­ern­ment. House Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan yes­ter­day grant­ed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's re­quest for Man­ning to be re­ferred to the com­mit­tee. "I con­sid­er there's suf­fi­cient raised by the MP for Siparia (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) that war­rants this mat­ter to be re­ferred to the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges for its ex­am­i­na­tion and re­port," Sinanan said. Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised the is­sue in the House yes­ter­day with re­spect to state­ments Man­ning made in his pre­sen­ta­tion to Par­lia­ment last week con­cern­ing a church be­ing built in the Heights of Gua­napo.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that Man­ning had said re­peat­ed­ly that the UNC Gov­ern­ment gave land to "one Bap­tist group" and that was 25 acres. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that in­for­ma­tion was in­ac­cu­rate. She said two oth­er state­ments by Man­ning were un­true "in at least two ma­te­r­i­al re­spects." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "The truth is that two Bap­tist groups were giv­en land and not one as al­leged by the mem­ber. The truth is that it was less than five acres of land that was giv­en to each group and not 25 acres as the mem­ber al­leges." Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­duced two leas­es of March 2000 in con­nec­tion with the is­sue. She said the two mem­o­ran­da are pub­lic doc­u­ments which could have been eas­i­ly ob­tained to ver­i­fy the num­ber of Bap­tist groups which were giv­en lands and the amount of lands giv­en to each.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said from the con­text of his state­ment, it was clear Man­ning had made en­quiries about Cab­i­net records show­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions which were giv­en State lands in the past. "Con­se­quent­ly, as head of the cab­i­net, up­on in­quiries with re­spect to doc­u­ments with­in the cus­tody and con­trol of the Cab­i­net, the Ho­n­ourable Mem­ber knew or ought to have known that his state­ments ... were un­true." Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed that Man­ning in his state­ment con­veyed in­for­ma­tion to the House that was in­ac­cu­rate and which he knew or ought to have known was in­ac­cu­rate... "And there­by the ho­n­ourable mem­ber mis­led the House," Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed. Per­sad- Bisses­sar added, "In the cir­cum­stances it is my re­spect­ful view that there are valid rea­sons to ques­tion whether by his state­ments the ho­n­ourable mem­ber for San Fer­nan­do East, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has com­mit­ted a breach of priv­i­lege and/or con­tempt of the House by mis­lead­ing the House in the man­ner set out.

"Con­se­quent­ly, I move that this mat­ter should be re­ferred to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee of the House to ex­am­ine and in­quire in­to the facts and then lay be­fore this House a re­port con­tain­ing the ev­i­dence, find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions so the House may take ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures to pun­ish the of­fence in a prop­er man­ner." House Speak­er Sinanan who said he had con­sid­ered the mat­ter, re­called a rul­ing he made in No­vem­ber 25, 2008. Sinanan said this rul­ing stat­ed that for a mis­lead­ing of the House to be de­lib­er­ate, there must be some­thing in the "in­cor­rect" state­ment that in­di­cat­ed the in­ten­tion to mis­lead. Where how­ev­er, the MP could be pre­sumed to have per­son­al knowl­edge for the facts stat­ed and makes the state­ment in a sit­u­a­tion of some for­mal­i­ty–for ex­am­ple via a per­son­al ex­pla­na­tion pre­sump­tion to mis­lead the House will more read­i­ly arise, he not­ed. UNC MPs thumped their desks in ap­proval of the an­nounce­ment.