The gov­ern­ment on Fri­day de­clined to re­spond to two ur­gent Op­po­si­tion ques­tions on the dis­missal of Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire and the ter­mi­na­tion of se­nior ex­ec­u­tives at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), in­vok­ing pub­lic in­ter­est pro­vi­sions in the Stand­ing Or­ders.

The ques­tions fell un­der the sec­tion No­tice of Ur­gent Ques­tions, which the Speak­er had ap­proved un­der Stand­ing Or­der 27.

The first ques­tion came from Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert, who asked Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, "Can the Min­is­ter pro­vide the rea­sons for the ter­mi­na­tion of the ap­point­ment of Dr.

Alvin Hi­laire as Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go? "

Tan­coo rose and said, “Thank you, Mis­ter Speak­er. Mis­ter Speak­er, I re­fer your at­ten­tion to Stand­ing Or­der 27(1)(g) as it re­lates to this ques­tion.”

Speak­er of the House Jagdeo Singh then clar­i­fied the pro­vi­sion, which al­lows a min­is­ter to de­cline to an­swer if, in their opin­ion, pub­lish­ing the re­sponse would be con­trary to the pub­lic in­ter­est.

A sec­ond ques­tion came from Arou­ca/Mal­oney MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who asked Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, In light of the con­fir­ma­tion by the Board of Com­mis­sion­ers of Wa­ter and Sew­er­age

Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) of the im­me­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion of nine ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers of WASA, can the Min­is­ter in­di­cate the rea­sons for the ter­mi­na­tion?" 

Padarath al­so de­clined to an­swer, in­vok­ing the same stand­ing or­der.

Op­po­si­tion did not chal­lenge ei­ther re­fusal. No points of or­der were raised, there were no sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions, and no desk-thump­ing fol­lowed the re­spons­es.

Dr Hi­laire was oust­ed af­ter re­port­ed­ly re­fus­ing gov­ern­ment pres­sure to re­veal top users of for­eign ex­change. Hal­l­i­day and nine ex­ec­u­tives were dis­missed as part of a shake-up to re­verse the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s WASA trans­for­ma­tion plan, with Act­ing CEO Jee­van Joseph ap­point­ed. 

There was no post-cab­i­net brief­ing on Thurs­day leav­ing the pub­lic with lit­tle of­fi­cial ex­pla­na­tion.