DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer House Speak­er is urg­ing a re­view of par­lia­men­tary rules, warn­ing that stronger sanc­tions are need­ed for breach­es of deco­rum as apolo­gies, es­pe­cial­ly in­sin­cere ones, “are no longer suf­fi­cient.”

Baren­dra Sinanan made the call while ad­dress­ing the up­roar over Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ment dur­ing Fri­day’s sit­ting to “cuff down” Diego Mar­tin North East MP Colm Im­bert.

The same de­bate al­so saw At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie tell some­one on the op­po­si­tion bench to “go and take your lil man.”

Yes­ter­day, Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath again de­fend­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­sponse, even as Im­bert pub­licly ac­cused him of be­ing “a bla­tant liar.”

In a post on X, Im­bert re­ject­ed Padarath’s claim that he “kept hurl­ing in­sults” at the Prime Min­is­ter, prompt­ing her re­sponse. He in­sist­ed they had “no in­ter­ac­tion un­til her out­burst,” say­ing the Prime Min­is­ter ar­rived late.

On Sun­day, Im­bert said both he and Per­sad-Bisses­sar had re­quest­ed a di­vi­sion at the end of the de­bate, but the Speak­er did not hear them. He said he point­ed to­ward her to in­di­cate she made the same re­quest, and she re­spond­ed by threat­en­ing vi­o­lence.

Padarath, how­ev­er, said Im­bert is “well known for his abu­sive, deroga­to­ry and con­de­scend­ing, some­times per­son­al in­sults.” He said he wit­nessed a “con­stant bar­rage of at­tacks,” de­scrib­ing Im­bert’s con­duct as bul­ly­ing for which he has “nev­er apol­o­gised.”

“I stand by what I saw and heard from some­one who ap­pears to be the new rag­ing bull of the PNM,” he added.

But Sinanan crit­i­cised be­hav­iour on both sides, say­ing it was “be­neath the dig­ni­ty of Par­lia­ment” and warn­ing of its wider im­pact.

“And when the young peo­ple and young stu­dents are think­ing of the fu­ture and see no hope in the coun­try start­ing from the top, then the brain drain will just ex­ac­er­bate and be­come worse than it is now. So, the whole sys­tem needs fix­ing. It’s bro­ken, pret­ty bro­ken.”

“It’s re­al­ly a tragedy, where you have an econ­o­my in trou­ble, and you have par­lia­men­tar­i­ans be­hav­ing that way. It doesn’t au­gur well for the fu­ture of the coun­try.”

Asked whether an apol­o­gy would re­solve the is­sue, he said it would not:

“There must be some sin­cer­i­ty in the apol­o­gy for it to have any mean­ing. So par­lia­men­tary prac­tice says that if you apol­o­gise, you know that that should be the end of it. But I think in Trinidad and To­ba­go, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans say things, and the eas­i­est thing to do is to apol­o­gise. But maybe the time has come to take a dif­fer­ent look at that.”

He rec­om­mend­ed that the priv­i­leges com­mit­tee be con­vened to ad­dress those is­sues, as well as min­is­ters’ re­fusal to an­swer ques­tions on the grounds of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment says it will out­line its po­si­tion at a me­dia con­fer­ence to­day.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh, who de­clined to com­ment. Ef­forts to con­tact Sen­ate Pres­i­dent and for­mer House Speak­er Wade Mark were un­suc­cess­ful.