Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

A lo­cal jour­nal­ist cre­at­ed his­to­ry in T&T yes­ter­day af­ter be­com­ing the first re­porter rec­om­mend­ed to be banned from Par­lia­ment's me­dia gallery fol­low­ing a re­port from the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Ac­cord­ing to the third re­port of the 2009 Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee, it was con­clud­ed that a con­tempt had been com­mit­ted by the News­day re­porter An­dre Ba­goo, through the pre­ma­ture pub­li­ca­tion of the pro­ceed­ings of the com­mit­tee. It fol­lowed a mo­tion in the Low­er House on Ju­ly 3 by In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal, who said the re­port­ed in­for­ma­tion ap­peared to touch on the pro­ceed­ings of the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges, in­clud­ing in­ter­ac­tions that might have tak­en place be­tween the Com­mit­tee and the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott). The com­mit­tee con­clud­ed that Ba­goo and the news­pa­per's pub­lish­er breached the rules of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and in par­tic­u­lar Stand­ing Or­der 81. The com­mit­tee made four rec­om­men­da­tions, which in­clud­ed that Ba­goo be banned from the me­dia gallery for the rest of the ses­sion. It al­so rec­om­mend­ed News­day pub­lish an apol­o­gy to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that car­ried equal promi­nence to his ar­ti­cle and ap­pear with­in pages one to three.

Com­mit­tee's mem­bers in­clud­ed House Speak­er Bar­ry Sinanan (chair­man), Gov­ern­ment MPs Colm Im­bert, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, Stan­ford Cal­len­der and Op­po­si­tion MPs Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Dr Tim Gopeesingh and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. In the mi­nor­i­ty re­port of the three Op­po­si­tion MPs, calls were made for mem­bers of the Low­er House to re­ject the com­mit­tee's re­port in its en­tire­ty and amend the re­port by delet­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion for the ban against Ba­goo. Calls to Ba­goo went unan­swered yes­ter­day and the T&T Guardian was in­formed that News­day's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and Ed­i­tor-in-Chief Therese Mills was not in the coun­try.