PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The be­hav­iour wit­nessed in the Par­lia­ment on Fri­day night is be­ing sharply crit­i­cised by the for­mer speak­er of the House, Nizam Mo­hammed.

Mo­hammed, in a com­ment giv­en via tele­phone to Guardian Me­dia, said, “We are op­pressed and be­sieged by crime in the coun­try. Sad­ly, be­hav­iour in par­lia­ment is aid­ing, abet­ting, and fu­el­ing an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour. Whether mem­bers of par­lia­ment re­alise this, re­gret­tably, such con­duct is al­ready spilling over to the Sen­ate as the chaos in­ten­si­fies, and this is not a good de­vel­op­ment. “

He con­tin­ued, “There is to­tal dis­re­gard for the stand­ing or­ders, when it comes to or­der and con­duct of pro­ceed­ings re­sult­ing in this break­down that we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, there is an en­tire chap­ter on the rules of or­der, which places the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty square­ly in the hands of the speak­er.”

Mo­hammed, who served as Speak­er from 1987 to 1991, al­so de­fend­ed the mut­ing of mi­cro­phones by the par­lia­men­tary staff, ex­plain­ing that they were do­ing their jobs as in­struct­ed, to main­tain or­der as well as broad­cast stan­dards.

“If pro­ceed­ings have de­scend­ed in­to dis­or­der and the Speak­er is at­tempt­ing to re­store or­der, all mi­cro­phones, whether Gov­ern­ment or Op­po­si­tion, should be mut­ed un­til the Speak­er re­gains con­trol of the House. Like­wise, if a Mem­ber has been speak­ing and the Speak­er ris­es to call that Mem­ber to or­der, make a rul­ing, or oth­er­wise in­ter­vene, the Mem­ber’s mi­cro­phone should be mut­ed while the Speak­er is speak­ing, “ he said, “The point is not to si­lence any­one. The point is to pre­serve the au­thor­i­ty of the Chair and the or­der­ly con­duct of par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings.”

Mo­hammed ex­plained fur­ther, “Quite of­ten, when pro­ceed­ings be­come un­ruly, the Speak­er will pause and wait for or­der to be re­stored be­fore con­tin­u­ing. If Mem­bers con­tin­ue speak­ing, shout­ing across the Cham­ber, or en­gag­ing in cross-talk, the Speak­er can­not be heard and the pro­ceed­ings can­not prop­er­ly con­tin­ue. In such cir­cum­stances, all mi­cro­phones ex­cept the Speak­er’s should be mut­ed un­til or­der is re­stored.”

“That is not an act of cen­sor­ship or par­ti­san­ship. It is a pro­ce­dur­al and tech­ni­cal mea­sure de­signed to en­sure that the au­thor­i­ty of the Chair can be ex­er­cised and that the pro­ceed­ings re­main in­tel­li­gi­ble both to Mem­bers in the Cham­ber and to the pub­lic fol­low­ing the de­bate,” he added.

The for­mer speak­er al­so raised se­ri­ous con­cerns over the claim that the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, Bar­ry Padarath, had tak­en a pho­to­graph of a mem­ber of staff in the Par­lia­ment.

“My con­cern is not with the tak­ing of the pho­to­graph it­self. In iso­la­tion, that act may ap­pear en­tire­ly in­nocu­ous. The con­cern lies in the con­text in which it oc­curred and the mes­sage that such con­duct may con­vey,” said Mo­hammed, “Par­lia­men­tary staff oc­cu­py a unique po­si­tion with­in our con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work. They are ex­pect­ed to serve all Mem­bers im­par­tial­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, of­ten un­der in­tense scruti­ny and in high­ly charged po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ments. Where al­le­ga­tions of bias have been raised, ac­tions di­rect­ed at in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of staff can eas­i­ly be per­ceived as per­son­al­is­ing a dis­pute that ought prop­er­ly to be ad­dressed through es­tab­lished in­sti­tu­tion­al chan­nels.”

Mo­hammed said no par­lia­men­tary em­ploy­ee should be placed in a po­si­tion where they may feel ex­posed, tar­get­ed, in­tim­i­dat­ed, or sub­ject­ed to per­son­al scruti­ny sim­ply for car­ry­ing out of­fi­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. As such, he called on House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh to ad­dress the mat­ter di­rect­ly.

He said, “Such guid­ance would pro­tect not on­ly the staff in­volved but al­so the in­tegri­ty of the par­lia­men­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion it­self.”

Ef­forts to get a com­ment from par­lia­men­tary staff and mem­bers of the Par­lia­ment Chan­nel yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.