Gail Alexan­der

While no pri­ma face case of con­tempt was found re­gard­ing In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal's re­cent con­tro­ver­sial Guardian col­umn, See­ta­hal has come in for crit­i­cism from deputy chair­man of Par­lia­ment's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee Pen­ne­lope Beck­les.

In a state­ment to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, Beck­les said yes­ter­day that she has found no pri­ma fa­cie case of con­tempt in the re­cent is­sue con­cern­ing See­ta­hal's col­umn which in­clud­ed re­marks about Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan. Beck­les, how­ev­er, said: "What I have found is that the ac­tions by this sen­a­tor (See­ta­hal) were pre-emp­tive and un­war­rant­ed and demon­strat­ed dis­cour­tesy to the Chair and to this House. "Sen­a­tor See­ta­hal can­not ar­gue that she was writ­ing here mere­ly as a jour­nal­ist...Sen­a­tor See­ta­hal is not just a sen­a­tor, but the sec­ond most se­nior sen­a­tor on the In­de­pen­dent bench and she ought to know bet­ter," Beck­les said. "To com­pound her glar­ing dis­re­spect of this House and its Chair, while all you ho­n­ourable mem­bers of this House await­ed my rul­ing, Sen­a­tor See­ta­hal chose to call a press con­fer­ence in this Par­lia­ment and re­assert the right­ful­ness of her ac­tions." Beck­les, who is al­so Deputy Speak­er, de­liv­ered a rul­ing yes­ter­day, af­ter a re­cent ap­pli­ca­tion by In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal to have the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee in­ves­ti­gate com­ments made by See­ta­hal in an Oc­to­ber 25 Sun­day Guardian col­umn. This in­clud­ed re­marks about Speak­er Sinanan.

Parsan­lal had al­leged the com­ments might amount to a con­tempt of the House. Beck­les han­dled the mat­ter since Sinanan, chair­man of the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee, re­cused him­self from the is­sue. De­tail­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the in­sti­tu­tion of Speak­er as the House's pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, Beck­les said the Speak­er was the fi­nal ar­biter of the rules of the House. How­ev­er, Beck­les said this did not mean that the con­duct of the Speak­er was im­mune from crit­i­cism and com­ment. Not­ing the spe­cif­ic com­ments by See­ta­hal which were in ques­tion, Beck­les said: "These words can be in­ter­pret­ed as reck­less and ill-ad­vised, es­pe­cial­ly writ­ten by a per­son who is a serv­ing sen­a­tor of this Par­lia­ment. "Sen­a­tor See­ta­hal is well aware that the in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the Stand­ing Or­ders is the sole dis­cre­tion of the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer and so for a sen­a­tor to pub­licly com­ment neg­a­tive­ly on the Speak­er's in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the rules of this House and to as­sume that her in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what should have tran­spired was the ac­cu­rate one, is more than a bit pre­sump­tu­ous," Beck­les added. She said: "I would think it sim­i­lar­ly brazen for any mem­ber of this Ho­n­ourable House to pre­sume that he or she could bold­ly ques­tion the right­ful­ness of a rul­ing by the Chair of the Sen­ate in a man­ner that is plain­ly dis­re­spect­ful of that of­fice." Beck­les said the prin­ci­ple that the con­duct of the chair may on­ly be chal­lenged by sub­stan­tive mo­tion, pre­vents dis­rup­tion of de­bate and en­sures dig­ni­ty.

She said this prin­ci­ple must be con­sid­ered to ap­ply, not just with­in one House of Par­lia­ment, "but be­tween the Hous­es for good re­la­tions and ci­vil­i­ty." On whether See­ta­hal's words con­sti­tut­ed a con­tempt of the House, Beck­les said com­ments on the Speak­er's per­for­mance were not un­com­mon since, she said, many peo­ple were un­in­formed and ig­no­rant of the House's rules, plus there was wide pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion and in­ter­est in the Par­lia­men­tary process. "But there is a lim­it to what is ac­cept­able com­ment," Beck­les added. She said the test of the lim­it was whether the com­ment al­leged that the Speak­er was bi­ased, un­fair or un­just in per­for­mance of his du­ties. "I ask all mem­bers to be more mind­ful of their ac­tions, both in­side and out­side the House, since they are re­flec­tive on this in­sti­tu­tion which we must al­ways hold in the high­est re­gard," she said.