Ke­jan Haynes

The Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion have both called for MPs on the op­pos­ing side to be re­ferred to Par­lia­ment’s Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges over al­leged­ly mis­lead­ing state­ments, in sep­a­rate com­plaints raised dur­ing Wednes­day’s sit­ting.

San Juan/Barataria MP Sad­dam Ho­sein asked that for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert be re­ferred to the com­mit­tee for in­vok­ing Stand­ing Or­der 49 dur­ing last Fri­day’s de­bate on the TTRA Re­peal Bill, claim­ing a mat­ter in­volv­ing him was still un­der ap­peal. Ho­sein said this blocked de­bate on a High Court rul­ing that had al­ready been up­held. “The mem­ber would have had knowl­edge that the ap­peal was dis­missed, as he was at all ma­te­r­i­al times rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys-at-law,” Ho­sein said.

Im­bert lat­er ad­dressed the House and apol­o­gised. He said when he raised the sub ju­dice point on June 13, he be­lieved the ap­peal was still ac­tive, since he had re­ceived no up­dates or com­mu­ni­ca­tion about the mat­ter. “Al­though I spoke in good faith and with­out any in­tent to de­ceive... I wish to un­re­served­ly apol­o­gise for a mis­state­ment in the House re­gard­ing the sta­tus of Civ­il Ap­peal 268 of 2020,” Im­bert said. He con­firmed that the ap­peal had in fact been struck out in Feb­ru­ary, but that he on­ly be­came aware of this af­ter check­ing with at­tor­neys fol­low­ing last week’s de­bate.

Lat­er in the sit­ting, Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les re­ferred To­co/San­gre Grande MP and Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee, ac­cus­ing him of mis­lead­ing the House dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee. Gon­za­les said Sturge had claimed that for­mer min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi owns Agra Court, a build­ing rent­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, when in fact Al-Rawi does not. “The mem­ber failed to dis­close the par­tic­u­lars of the true own­er of the said prop­er­ty... be­cause it does not ex­ist,” Gon­za­les said, call­ing the state­ment a de­lib­er­ate false­hood.

Sturge sub­se­quent­ly ad­dressed the House and clar­i­fied his po­si­tion. He said he nev­er claimed Al-Rawi was the le­gal own­er of the prop­er­ty. “I have since been in­formed that the build­ing is, in fact, owned by the fa­ther-in-law and wife of Faris Al-Rawi,” Sturge said. “So that Faris Al-Rawi… has a ben­e­fi­cial in­ter­est in that prop­er­ty.” He main­tained that his com­ments re­flect­ed that in­ter­est and not le­gal own­er­ship.

House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh de­ferred judg­ment on both priv­i­lege re­fer­rals and said he would rule lat­er in the pro­ceed­ings.