Gail Alexan­der

House Speak­er Wade Mark will de­liv­er a rul­ing at the next Low­er House ses­sion on the re­quest by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley to have Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship MP Anil Roberts in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Par­lia­ment's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee. Dur­ing yes­ter­day's House ses­sion, Row­ley called for Roberts to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed for re­marks Roberts made re­cent­ly in Par­lia­ment. This con­cerned Roberts' al­le­ga­tion that Row­ley used his min­is­te­r­i­al pow­er in 2003 to "over­rule" Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion and grant ap­proval for a 15 storey tow­er com­plex at Bayshore.

Roberts claimed that Joseph Ra­hael, son of for­mer PNM Min­is­ter John Ra­hael, was in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment. Row­ley said yes­ter­day he had ex­plained that the ap­proval was giv­en in 2005, two years af­ter he ceased to be Plan­ning min­is­ter and had al­so point­ed out oth­er facts sup­port­ed by doc­u­ments.

He re­it­er­at­ed that he nev­er is­sued any di­rec­tive to Town and Coun­try Plan­ning di­vi­sion. Notwith­stand­ing all the in­for­ma­tion he had sub­mit­ted, Row­ley said, Roberts has per­sist­ed in mak­ing the state­ments.

Say­ing Roberts was mak­ing a des­per­ate at­tempt to "man­u­fac­ture" in­for­ma­tion to dam­age him, Row­ley con­tend­ed that Roberts had wil­ful­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­led the House and gross­ly abused free­dom of speech in the House.

Mark said he would rule on the is­sue at the next ses­sion. Roberts, who held a me­dia brief­ing at 3 pm, said he had at­tempt­ed to de­liv­er a state­ment on the is­sue at yes­ter­day's House, but he said this was not al­lowed by the Speak­er. While Roberts said he re­spect­ed the Speak­er's de­ci­sion, he felt he had to clear his name which was be­ing sul­lied by Row­ley in the pub­lic do­main. Roberts al­leged Row­ley had "at­tempt­ed to hood­wink" the pub­lic on the is­sue since he had dis­claimed giv­ing fi­nal ap­proval. But, Roberts said, his claims had per­tained to out­line ap­proval and not fi­nal ap­proval.

He claimed Row­ley chose to ig­nore the out­line ap­proval as­pect and fo­cused on the fact that fi­nal ap­proval oc­curred un­der his suc­ces­sor for­mer PNM Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is. Roberts claimed the out­line ap­proval he spoke of, was giv­en on Ju­ly 11, 2003 when Row­ley was Plan­ning min­is­ter. Roberts al­so claimed Joseph Ra­hael and Woodguill De­vel­op­ers formed a new joint com­pa­ny called Shore­lands De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd which re­ceived out­line ap­proval on that date.