Gail Alexan­der

De­spite rifts in the UNC, all Op­po­si­tion UNC MPs–in­clud­ing the Ram­jack fac­tion–were unit­ed yes­ter­day when they out-vot­ed Gov­ern­ment to ob­tain de­bate on the plight of Chi­nese work­ers in T&T. The need for UNC num­bers on the is­sue arose dur­ing yes­ter­day's Low­er House ses­sion when the Gov­ern­ment side re­fused to sup­port de­bate of the mo­tion which had been filed by UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal. House Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan had al­lowed the mo­tion, say­ing it was wor­thy of dis­cus­sion. Sinanan had asked if the House wished to de­bate it at the end of yes­ter­day's sit­tings and ini­tial­ly re­ceived what ap­peared to be a pos­i­tive re­ac­tion. How­ev­er sev­er­al min­utes lat­er, Sinanan said there seemed to be some "un­cer­tain­ty" on the Gov­ern­ment side on whether those MPs would like the mat­ter de­bat­ed.

Sinanan put the is­sue to mem­bers again. When he re­ceived a mixed re­ac­tion that time–and PNM ob­jec­tion to the mo­tion–he said that the Con­sti­tu­tion, the supreme law, re­quired a quo­rum of 11 MPs to ap­prove the mo­tion for de­bate.

Sinanan asked those MPs in favour of the mo­tion to stand. All of the UNC MPs in the House stood up. This in­clud­ed Ram­jack fac­tion back-bench MPs Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, WIn­ston Pe­ters and Jack Warn­er who stood with their col­leagues MPs Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar, Nizam Baksh, Hamza Rafeeq, Sub­has Pan­day, Roodal Mooni­lal, Tim Gopeesingh, Chan­dresh Shar­ma, Vas­ant Bharath and Har­ry Par­tap. "It's more than suf­fi­cient to have this mo­tion de­bat­ed," Sinanan added.