Gail Alexan­der

House Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan has re­ferred CCN-TV6 and its em­ploy­ees, Sasha Mo­hammed and Saman­tha John, to Par­lia­ment's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee re­gard­ing an al­leged false and mis­lead­ing ac­count of Par­lia­ment pro­ceed­ings. This fol­lowed a move by Gov­ern­ment at yes­ter­day's Low­er House ses­sion to have TV6, Mo­hammed and John re­ferred to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for al­leged­ly dis­tort­ing Sinanan's rul­ings and the pro­ceed­ings of the House.

Rul­ing on the is­sue, Sinanan said: "While the Op­po­si­tion mem­bers may feel this is a laugh­ing mat­ter, I do not. It is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter be­cause it af­fects the comi­ty be­tween the Par­lia­ment and Ju­di­cia­ry." He added: "I have read this care­ful­ly and I am dis­turbed by what has come out of this and I have no hes­i­ta­tion what­so­ev­er in re­fer­ring this mat­ter to the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges for its con­sid­er­a­tion and re­port." The is­sue in­volved state­ments made by Sinanan at the House's Oc­to­ber 9 sit­ting. At that ses­sion, Sinanan had struck down ef­forts by UNC MP Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to have At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie tak­en to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for state­ments Je­re­mie had made re­gard­ing Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine last month.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so sought to have Sinanan re­cuse him­self from the com­mit­tee –which Sinanan heads–on the is­sue. Yes­ter­day, de­liv­er­ing Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion, In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal said he was to­tal­ly tak­en aback at TV6's re­port­ing of the mat­ter in its 7 pm broad­cast of Oc­to­ber 9. Parsan­lal said the House had to reg­is­ter con­cern on this oc­ca­sion since the man­ner of the re­port­ing of the mat­ter and the "grave in­ac­cu­ra­cies" con­tained in the TV6 re­port could se­vere­ly dam­age the comi­ty that al­ways had ex­ist­ed be­tween the leg­is­la­ture and the ju­di­cia­ry and "bring the House and Speak­er in­to odi­um or ridicule." Parsan­lal said the first in­ac­cu­ra­cy or dis­tor­tion was made by TV6's John–a news pre­sen­ter–who had said Sinanan "had ruled that AG Je­re­mie act­ed prop­er­ly when he crit­i­cised the judge." Parsan­lal said Mo­hammed in the re­port al­so dis­tort­ed oth­er state­ments.

He told Sinana: "It is my sub­mis­sion, based on in­for­ma­tion be­fore you and this House, that these state­ments dis­tort your rul­ings and pro­ceed­ings of this ho­n­ourable House. "Nei­ther in your ini­tial rul­ing nor in your rul­ing of Oc­to­ber 9 did you state that it was right for the mem­ber (Je­re­mie) to crit­i­cise the judge." He said in the 23 months he had been a mem­ber of the House, Mo­hammed, a re­porter, "has rarely ever deigned to vis­it this au­gust Cham­ber." Yet, Parsan­lal said, Mo­hammed had in­cor­rect­ly claimed in her re­port that sev­er­al Op­po­si­tion MPs were re­ferred to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee fol­low­ing com­plaints by Gov­ern­ment mem­bers and that Op­po­si­tion MPs were un­suc­cess­ful in re­fer­ring PNM MPs to the same com­mit­tee. Parsan­lal said the pub­lic record shows a dif­fer­ent pic­ture to the one Mo­hammed paint­ed, since on­ly two UNC MPs were re­ferred to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee in re­cent months and not for the rea­sons Mo­hammed stat­ed.