Richard?Lord

Any de­ci­sion to sus­pend the Op­po­si­tion Leader from the House is ex­pect­ed to be chal­lenged in court by at least one con­stituent from Diego Mar­tin West.This as Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and all Op­po­si­tion MPs who were present in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day walked out of the cham­ber af­ter MP for Diego Mar­tin North­east Colm Im­bert spoke at yes­ter­day's mo­tion, pi­lot­ed by Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal to sus­pend Row­ley from the Par­lia­ment over his Email­gate al­le­ga­tions.

Speak­ing with re­porters min­utes lat­er, Row­ley said if he were to stay in the Par­lia­ment for the de­bate he would ef­fec­tive­ly be en­gag­ing in an il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty and con­se­quent­ly it may prej­u­dice any fu­ture moves by his con­stituents to seek le­gal re­course in the mat­ter.He said the Gov­ern­ment was hop­ing "if the peo­ple of Diego Mar­tin West chal­lenge their (its) il­le­gal ac­tions, then it can be said that I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­ceed­ings and gave it such le­git­i­ma­cy."

Row­ley said it was be­cause of that ba­sis "we have tak­en the po­si­tion once again not to par­tic­i­pate in the Gov­ern­ment's ir­reg­u­lar and il­lic­it pro­ceed­ings."Op­po­si­tion MPs walked out of the Par­lia­ment in protest yes­ter­day.Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment's move to sus­pend a MP on a sub­stan­tive mo­tion was un­prece­dent­ed in T&T and the Com­mon­wealth.

He told re­porters in the in­ter­view in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day the Gov­ern­ment had every op­por­tu­ni­ty to deal with his state­ments on the Email­gate mat­ter by re­fer­ring him to the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges but it did not do that.He said if he was sent to the com­mit­tee on the E-mail­gate state­ments he would have had "no choice but to ap­pear be­fore the com­mit­tee." He said he would have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge all that they had said.

Row­ley was, how­ev­er, re­ferred to the said com­mit­tee ear­li­er yes­ter­day for state­ments he made in pre­sent­ing a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai two weeks ago.Speak­er Mark ruled that a pri­ma fa­cie case was made out against Row­ley for al­leged con­tempt of Par­lia­ment and he was re­ferred to the com­mit­tee for in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Row­ley said as a MP he al­so had free­dom of speech.Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment should have fol­lowed the law in seek­ing to chal­lenge his state­ments on the mat­ter."We will en­gage them on this and every oth­er is­sue on the out­side," he in­sist­ed.Not­ing that Mooni­lal made no men­tion of the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co, Row­ley said: "We un­der­stand that what is con­tained in those texts it had all to do with Sec­tion 34."

Asked if he was con­tem­plat­ing le­gal ac­tion, Row­ley said he "will cross every bridge as I ap­proach it."Say­ing that he was a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the peo­ple of Diego Mar­tin West, Row­ley added: "In the event that the Gov­ern­ment takes any ac­tion, in or out of this House, that prej­u­dices the in­ter­est of Diego Mar­tin West I will be du­ty-bound to rep­re­sent them to the end."

He said the ear­li­er de­ci­sion by House Speak­er Wade Mark to re­fer him to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee was "all part of a des­per­a­tion and a need for a dis­trac­tion." He said the rul­ing of Speak­er Mark was "just out­right scan­dalous."Row­ley said the stand­ing or­ders pro­vid­ed for the mover of the mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in Howai to present it and al­so wind it up the de­bate.