Gail Alexan­der

It's not go­ing to be busi­ness as usu­al dur­ing the Pres­i­dent's ad­dress to Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to­day.This is how the sit­u­a­tion is shap­ing up con­cern­ing new Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona's first ad­dress at to­day's cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of Par­lia­ment–the launch of the Fourth Ses­sion of the Tenth Par­lia­ment at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain.Wright­son Road, where the com­plex is lo­cat­ed, will be closed to traf­fic from noon to­day un­til 3 pm to fa­cil­i­tate the mil­i­tary guard of ho­n­our which Pres­i­dent Car­mona will in­spect pri­or to his ad­dress.The T&T Guardian has con­firmed that Car­mona's ad­dress, com­ing on the heels of the up­heaval of this week's po­lit­i­cal land­scape, will be a ma­jor pre­sen­ta­tion and al­so a de­par­ture from the de­liv­er­ies of past cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ings.

It is ex­pect­ed to deal with the T&T land­scape, po­lit­i­cal and oth­er­wise, as well as oth­er mat­ters as these re­late to the Par­lia­ment, which sources say have been brought to Car­mona's at­ten­tion by the pub­lic at large.Car­mona's speech, ac­cord­ing to sources, is ex­pect­ed to be yet "an­oth­er game chang­er" in the se­quence of events which have tak­en place ear­li­er this week and which have caused shifts in the po­lit­i­cal land­scape.While all ears may be tuned to Car­mona's ad­dress to­day, all eyes will al­so be fo­cused on the re-en­try to Par­lia­ment of re-elect­ed Ch­agua­nas West MP Austin Jack Warn­er, as well as how his for­mer PP Gov­ern­ment col­leagues in­ter­act with him af­ter their crush­ing elec­tion de­feat on Mon­day.Warn­er ar­rives at the Par­lia­ment at 12.45 pm for the ac­tiv­i­ties, which be­gin at 1.30 pm.Warn­er, who re­signed as MP on April 26, last oc­cu­pied a seat at the end of the PP back­bench–be­hind for­mer PNM leader Patrick Man­ning' s seat–af­ter he quit the Cab­i­net and UNC chair­man­ship at that time.

When he was part of the Gov­ern­ment, Warn­er, then UNC chair­man, sat at the right hand of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the PP front bench, but was bumped to back bench sta­tus af­ter quit­ting.Af­ter re­claim­ing the Ch­agua­nas West seat, Warn­er re­turns to the Par­lia­ment to­day and will sit next to for­mer UNC MP Her­bert Vol­ney for the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing func­tion.When Par­lia­ment re­sumes, nor­mal busi­ness and desk arrange­ments will be back to their reg­u­lar line-up, where Warn­er is al­so ex­pect­ed to take up a seat on the back­bench next to Vol­ney, be­hind the Op­po­si­tion PNM lead­er­ship.In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al par­ty (ILP) of­fi­cials said con­sid­er­a­tion was be­ing giv­en to us­ing a seat be­hind PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley which would al­so place Warn­er di­rect­ly fac­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar across the aisle, on the PP front bench.

Vol­ney re­moved him­self from un­der the PP whip last year af­ter be­ing dis­missed from the Cab­i­net and on Tues­day re­signed from the UNC af­ter Warn­er's vic­to­ry. He has, how­ev­er, not giv­en up St Joseph which he won on a UNC tick­et in 2010, and has no plans to fight a by-elec­tion for it.Vol­ney said when Par­lia­ment re­sumes in full he'd like to con­tin­ue us­ing the back­bench seat–be­hind the PNM–that he used all of last term.Vol­ney, how­ev­er, added, "But I'd have to wait and see what the House Speak­er de­cides.""I no­ti­fied him on Wednes­day of my changed cir­cum­stances–re­sign­ing from UNC–and I'll have to abide by where he puts me to sit. But I ex­pect Jack and I will sit next to each oth­er when Par­lia­ment busi­ness be­gins in ernest."Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials on Wednes­day said seat­ing for Warn­er and Vol­ney would like­ly be be­hind the Op­po­si­tion PNM, since the two are not part of the Gov­ern­ment and that was the on­ly space avail­able for such in­di­vid­u­als.

Ac­cord­ing to the tra­di­tion for the open­ing of a new ses­sion, both the Up­per and Low­er Hous­es will meet sep­a­rate­ly, the Sen­ate in a near­by com­mit­tee room, and the Low­er House in the Par­lia­ment cham­ber.The Sen­ate sit­ting will al­so be buzzing with the en­try of four new In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, An­tho­ny Vieira, Dhanayshar Ma­habir, Ian Roach and David Small, who were ap­point­ed by Car­mona on Wednes­day.Mem­bers of both Hous­es will then meet to­geth­er–along with mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry–in the Par­lia­ment cham­ber for the Pres­i­dent's ad­dress.