"Fool­ish­ness and a waste of time."That was how Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Colm Im­bert dis­missed gov­ern­ment's no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing yes­ter­day's de­bate on the mo­tion. Im­bert was re­ply­ing to Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) House Leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal's pi­lot­ing of the mo­tion in Par­lia­ment.Im­bert lat­er had to with­draw the word "fool­ish" on House Speak­er Wade Mark's re­quest be­cause it was deemed un­par­lia­men­tary lan­guage.

Im­bert said Mooni­lal's state­ment was child­ish and the Par­lia­ment was wast­ing time on the mo­tion while im­por­tant mat­ters such as Mon­day's grid­lock need­ed to be ex­am­ined.He dis­missed Mooni­lal's points about Row­ley on is­sues dat­ing back to 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009, say­ing they were all in the past and Row­ley wasn't Op­po­si­tion Leader then. He said Row­ley was ex­on­er­at­ed in the Lan­date and Uff en­quiries, and the One Wood­brook Place Apart­ment project–where Row­ley was said to have ac­quired an apart­ment–was ini­ti­at­ed un­der the then UNC gov­ern­ment.

Im­bert said that such mo­tions were not done save in Aus­tralia in 1912. He read out records of the Aus­tralian Par­lia­ment from 1912, when he said the Speak­er then threw out such a mo­tion, deem­ing it friv­o­lous and out of or­der. He said, "That was Speak­er." When PP MPs ac­cused him of cast­ing as­per­sions on House Speak­er Mark, and Mark queried if Im­bert was chal­leng­ing the mo­tion which he'd ap­proved for de­bate, Im­bert de­nied he was cast­ing as­per­sions on Mark.

He said: "I'm talk­ing about the prece­dent of the mo­tion, I'm not cast­ing as­per­sions on you (Mark)...I'm talk­ing about all of you, is the Gov­ern­ment play­ing the fool."Im­bert then said it was the Prime Min­is­ter who had nom­i­nat­ed David West to head the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty and the PP had "ma­nip­u­lat­ed facts" to say Row­ley had. Through­out Im­bert's con­tri­bu­tion he ap­pealed to Mark to get PP MPs–es­pe­cial­ly the Prime Min­is­ter–to be qui­et while he spoke.

Road­block mo­tion de­nied

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day that Mon­day's si­mul­ta­ne­ous po­lice road­blocks were an il­le­gal use of pow­er and au­thor­i­ty by po­lice now en­gaged in wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.He did so in propos­ing a mo­tion to be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment on the ac­tion by po­lice. He said there was the like­li­hood that the po­lice would re­peat the events of Mon­day, which would see the col­lapse of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem of T&T.

Row­ley said the mo­tion was ur­gent­ly re­quired, since ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the po­lice as­so­ci­a­tion had said the road blocks were pre­vi­ous­ly sched­uled. He said any­thing like this, short of in a state of emer­gency, was an ab­ro­ga­tion of au­thor­i­ty and abuse of pow­er by the state's agents, mak­ing the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem vul­ner­a­ble to abuse.

He voiced con­cern about the sit­u­a­tion ex­pos­ing is­sues with­in the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem, Spe­cial Branch, Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, SSA and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, adding if the sit­u­a­tion re­curred it would re­sult in huge loss­es, leav­ing thou­sands strand­ed again. House Speak­er Wade Mark said the mo­tion didn't qual­i­fy un­der Stand­ing Or­der 17, un­der which it was filed, but could be re­filed un­der an­oth­er stand­ing or­der.