On Fri­day, Patrick Man­ning, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for San Fer­nan­do East and for­mer prime min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, tabled a mo­tion seek­ing greater in­volve­ment by le­gal pro­fes­sion­als in a mat­ter be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee.Mr Man­ning had been re­ferred to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee over al­le­ga­tions that he made in Par­lia­ment re­gard­ing the pri­vate home of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. In pre­sent­ing his mo­tion to the House, Mr Man­ning ar­gued that he did not feel that he would get a fair hear­ing be­fore the Speak­er of the House and the op­po­si­tion mem­bers of the com­mit­tee.Giv­en Patrick Man­ning's se­nior­i­ty and ex­pe­ri­ence as Par­lia­ment's longest sit­ting mem­ber, the is­sues raised must reach deep­er than per­ceived in­jus­tice.

The Mem­ber for San Fer­nan­do East will cel­e­brate his 40th year in the House in 2011 and he is cer­tain­ly aware that the same ar­gu­ment he pre­sent­ed on Fri­day could have been raised by any op­po­si­tion mem­ber called be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee over the last four decades.He will al­so be aware that mem­bers fac­ing the scruti­ny of the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee have the ben­e­fit of le­gal coun­sel be­fore as well as dur­ing their hear­ings, al­though par­lia­men­tary pro­to­col dic­tates lawyers do not speak for their clients in those cham­bers.

The rea­sons for this should be crys­tal clear to such an ex­pe­ri­enced politi­cian. Par­lia­ment, as the guid­ing gath­er­ing of elect­ed of­fi­cials tasked with di­rect­ing the man­age­ment of the na­tion's af­fairs, must be ma­ture and so­phis­ti­cat­ed enough to eval­u­ate and po­lice any per­ceived in­frac­tions by its mem­bers with­out ex­ter­nal in­ter­ven­tion or in­flu­ence.For Mr Man­ning to threat­en, in Par­lia­ment, that his con­cerns about un­fair treat­ment might move him to take this is­sue to the Privy Coun­cil must rep­re­sent a crafty and fo­cused ef­fort to bring to shine a new light on Priv­i­leges hear­ings since it rep­re­sents noth­ing less than a clear at­tempt to change the due process of par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure.

The ar­gu­ment by the for­mer prime min­is­ter might be favourably viewed in light of the es­sen­tial right of any cit­i­zen of T&T to have le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion when ac­cused of an in­frac­tion, but that pre­sup­pos­es the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee to be some­thing of a court of law, when it might be bet­ter de­scribed as an ethics pan­el em­pow­ered to levy ap­pro­pri­ate penal­ty.Such an ar­gu­ment al­so sets aside the role of a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, who acts as a sort of "su­perci­t­i­zen" in the House, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the in­ter­ests of both par­ty and con­stituents in mat­ters that de­fine the eco­nom­ic and le­gal ad­vance­ment of the busi­ness of this coun­try.

Such mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to be able to speak not just on their own be­half, but de­ci­sive­ly and learned­ly for thou­sands of na­tion­als who elect­ed them to of­fice to ful­fil ex­act­ly that role. When dis­cus­sions in Par­lia­ment go suf­fi­cient­ly awry that they be­come a mat­ter for re­view by the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee, it is not un­rea­son­able to ex­pect that the elect­ed mem­ber, hav­ing pre­sent­ed his ini­tial case, should be able, with suit­able le­gal ad­vice, to de­fend his po­si­tion or to apol­o­gise for an er­ror.This is the way that Par­lia­men­tary process has op­er­at­ed here since it be­came the linch­pin of self-gov­ern­ment in 1962 and it is the way it has op­er­at­ed in most oth­er Com­mon­wealth Par­lia­ments.The chal­lenge to those prin­ci­ples, there­fore need­ed to be pre­sent­ed more ro­bust­ly and with greater res­o­nance on Fri­day.

It seems that the Op­po­si­tion was well aware of the far-reach­ing reper­cus­sions of the pro­posed mo­tion when Patrick Man­ning held dis­cus­sions with his par­ty. Ac­cord­ing to Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip, Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, amend­ments to the spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments of le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and cross ex­am­i­na­tion were re­quest­ed of the Mem­ber for San Fer­nan­do East. When the changes were not made, the par­ty's of­fi­cial po­si­tion was to ab­stain from the vote.

The mo­tion, al­ready de­feat­ed when the Op­po­si­tion was called on to vote, rais­es some ques­tions wor­thy of fur­ther dis­cus­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of Patrick Man­ning's in­sis­tence that the mat­ter was "one of fun­da­men­tal rights and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights."Key to the is­sue re­mains the ques­tion of whether the ex­pec­ta­tion of a right to have a lawyer speak for an MP be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee is trumped by es­tab­lished Par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure.It's a ques­tion that was vot­ed on dur­ing Fri­day's ses­sion, but it should re­main open to wider na­tion­al de­bate and dis­cus­sion.