KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

As the Op­po­si­tion press­es for swift ac­tion over al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath and par­lia­men­tary staff, for­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed be­lieves Jagdeo Singh should have ad­dressed the mat­ter be­fore it es­ca­lat­ed in­to a pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy.

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as alarm­ing, Mo­hammed crit­i­cised Singh’s han­dling of the is­sue, say­ing it re­quired ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed de­scribed the mat­ter as “un­prece­dent­ed” and said it re­flect­ed poor­ly on Par­lia­ment as an in­sti­tu­tion.

Mo­hammed said: “In the first place, a mat­ter of this na­ture is un­prece­dent­ed. And it is very sad that this sit­u­a­tion had to reach the pub­lic do­main. The ac­tu­al work­ing groups of the Par­lia­ment fall un­der the House Speak­er. And if there was any in­di­ca­tion what­so­ev­er that there was a prob­lem with par­lia­men­tary staff, that should have been re­solved as a mat­ter of ur­gency with­out hav­ing to be in the pub­lic do­main.”

He said Singh should be dis­ap­point­ed in his han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion.

“I think that on re­flec­tion, the Speak­er ought to be very dis­ap­point­ed with him­self that he has al­lowed some­thing like this to ac­tu­al­ly get in­to the pub­lic do­main. And if I were in his po­si­tion, I would have done every­thing pos­si­ble to stymie any fur­ther de­vel­op­ment that is in­im­i­cal to the im­age of Par­lia­ment. It is a very sad state of af­fairs and it falls square­ly on the shoul­ders of the Speak­er of the House.”

Mo­hammed added that the pro­longed pub­lic de­bate sur­round­ing the is­sue points to a fail­ure in lead­er­ship with­in Par­lia­ment.

“What­ev­er has hap­pened is very un­for­tu­nate. It does not au­gur well for Par­lia­ment as an in­sti­tu­tion where be­hav­iour is ex­em­plary at all times. As a mat­ter of fact, it is the first time in the his­to­ry of our Par­lia­ment some­thing like this has tak­en place,” he said.

He added that the Speak­er should have moved de­ci­sive­ly to con­tain the is­sue and pro­tect the in­sti­tu­tion’s rep­u­ta­tion.

The con­tro­ver­sy stems from al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing Padarath’s treat­ment of par­lia­men­tary staff dur­ing a heat­ed sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week Fri­day.

The Op­po­si­tion lat­er boy­cotted part of the par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings, walk­ing out of the Cham­ber dur­ing Padarath’s con­tri­bu­tion in protest.

The Op­po­si­tion has al­so called for a crim­i­nal probe in­to the mat­ter.

An­oth­er for­mer House Speak­er, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said a for­mal re­port by the staff mem­ber in­volved should be made—whether to the Speak­er or the po­lice—be­fore any con­clu­sions are drawn.

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed main­tained that Singh should have act­ed re­gard­less of whether a for­mal com­plaint was filed.

“The sit­u­a­tion was al­lowed to gain mo­men­tum and con­tin­ue to at­tract pub­lic at­ten­tion and pub­lic com­ment, and I think that the Speak­er should have ex­hib­it­ed greater dili­gence and re­solved the mat­ter rather than al­low the con­tin­u­a­tion of alarm over what is ac­tu­al­ly tak­ing place in Par­lia­ment.”

He al­so raised con­cerns about the be­hav­iour of Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, say­ing the dis­or­der re­flect­ed a trou­bling lack of con­trol.

“The footage we have wit­nessed, with both sides con­tin­u­ing that sort of row­di­ness, was very alarm­ing and un­prece­dent­ed. And to be frank, it showed that the Speak­er was un­able to ex­er­cise his au­thor­i­ty in con­trol­ling the be­hav­iour of mem­bers of the House in this par­tic­u­lar in­stance.”

In his view, the con­duct wit­nessed in Par­lia­ment is con­tribut­ing to a broad­er break­down in so­cial or­der.

“It con­tin­ues to cre­ate a lot of dis­com­fort in the coun­try and is adding to the law­less­ness and rau­cous be­hav­iour we are wit­ness­ing at every lev­el of so­ci­ety. Bring­ing Par­lia­ment in­to that realm of be­hav­iour is very alarm­ing and dis­com­fort­ing. Peo­ple are very wor­ried about this. The bot­tom line is that we are a talk­a­tive peo­ple, but the quar­rel­ing at every lev­el in so­ci­ety is be­com­ing a bit too bur­den­some. It is cre­at­ing dis­qui­et, dis­com­fort and un­easi­ness.”

At­tempts to con­tact Singh for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.