Gail Alexan­der

The Op­po­si­tion PNM yes­ter­day failed in its at­tempt to have Min­is­ters John Sandy and Su­ruj Ram­bachan re­ferred to Par­lia­ment's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for re­cent "mis­lead­ing" state­ments on the Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine is­sue. Af­ter ap­pli­ca­tions on the is­sue by PNM MPs Amery Browne and Nile­ung Hy­po­lite, House Speak­er Wade Mark said no pri­ma fa­cie case had been made. Yes­ter­day, in the House, Sandy de­liv­ered a sec­ond apol­o­gy on the Ram­nar­ine is­sue af­ter apol­o­gis­ing on Thurs­day al­so. Browne, call­ing for Sandy to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, said Sandy had mis­led the House and knew or ought to have known that the state­ment he made last week was mis­lead­ing.

He said the im­pact of Sandy's state­ment was com­pound­ed by the fact that he had been try­ing to set the record straight when he made the "mis­lead­ing" state­ment. Browne said Sandy's state­ment was a vi­o­la­tion of the House's free­dom of speech and of the Par­lia­ment's Stand­ing Or­ders. Hy­po­lite not­ed Ram­bachan had said Ram­nar­ine had a BSc de­gree in in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, was com­plet­ing a BA and had in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence. Hy­po­lite said it was now pub­lic knowl­edge that this was not so.

Not­ing that Speak­er Mark had stressed min­is­ters must give ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion to the House, Hy­po­lite said Ram­bachan had com­mit­ted a con­tempt of the Par­lia­ment with his state­ment. Hy­po­lite said Ram­bachan "wil­ful­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly" mis­led the House and "gross­ly" abused free­dom of speech in the House. Mark, rul­ing af­ter Sandy apol­o­gised to the House, dealt with both ap­pli­ca­tions in his rul­ing. Mark said nei­ther Sandy nor the Gov­ern­ment had any in­ten­tion to de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead the House. He added: "It would be be­neath the dig­ni­ty of the House not to ac­cept the apol­o­gy of the min­is­ter." Ram­nar­ine was the Op­po­si­tion's fo­cus in oth­er House busi­ness yes­ter­day, when Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley spoke on a mo­tion con­cern­ing the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency where Ram­nar­ine works. Row­ley quot­ed ex­ten­sive­ly from news­pa­per re­ports to sup­port his ar­gu­ments on the Ram­nar­ine is­sue.