Renu­ka Singh

Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein says the ques­tions raised by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress were large­ly unan­swered and has la­belled Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as “child­ish” for not prop­er­ly un­der­stand­ing how last week’s mo­tion to re­move pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes should have been han­dled.

Ho­sein made the com­ment dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing the par­ty host­ed yes­ter­day, as it con­tin­ued its au­top­sy in­to the de­feat­ed mo­tion to re­move the Pres­i­dent.

The bid failed on Thurs­day, gar­ner­ing on­ly 24 votes in agree­ment and 47 votes against. How­ev­er, the mo­tion and the meet­ing of the Elec­toral Col­lege it­self were marred by con­stant in­ter­rup­tions by the mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion and pep­pered with at­tacks against House Speak­er Brigid An­nisette-George and thun­der­ous desk thump­ing and ac­cu­sa­tions of mut­ed mics.

Yes­ter­day, Ho­sein said the coun­try still did not know who in­ter­fered with the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s mer­it list for a po­lice com­mis­sion­er and what caused it to be with­drawn the same day it was sup­posed to be de­liv­ered to Weekes. He once again re­it­er­at­ed that the coun­try was in a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis be­cause of the Prime Min­is­ter.

“The cen­tral pil­lars to this fi­as­co is the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent and the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. We must not for­get the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in this,” Ho­sein said.

“Be­fore we filed this mo­tion, the leader of the Op­po­si­tion, to­geth­er with mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion, we did our due dili­gence. We pro­vid­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties to the Pres­i­dent through pub­lic calls to iden­ti­fy or tell the coun­try the iden­ti­ty of the pub­lic of­fi­cial that was fa­cil­i­tat­ed at the Pres­i­dent’s House at around the time of the de­liv­ery of the mer­it list.”

That call, Ho­sein said, was met with “deaf­en­ing si­lence.”

How­ev­er, he said that the UNC main­tains that it want­ed an­swers.

“We didn’t want an­swers for our­selves alone, we want­ed an­swers for the peo­ple of the Re­pub­lic of T&T,” he said.

Row­ley and the en­tire Gov­ern­ment bench re­mained silent dur­ing Thurs­day’s mo­tion and the erup­tions from the Op­po­si­tion.

Both Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar held press con­fer­ences af­ter the mo­tion was de­feat­ed. But Ho­sein said the PM, in­stead of call­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence to air his side, should have stood up dur­ing the Elec­toral Col­lege meet­ing “like a man.”

“The coun­try was ab­solute­ly shocked and ap­palled that the Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives de­cid­ed to si­lence the Par­lia­ment by not al­low­ing a de­bate,” Ho­sein said.

Ho­sein said dis­clo­sure should have been fa­cil­i­tat­ed al­though the Con­sti­tu­tion does not al­low for a de­bate at that stage of the pro­ceed­ings. He ar­gued that when­ev­er there is a chal­lenge, the Con­sti­tu­tion must be giv­en room for “gen­er­ous in­ter­pre­ta­tion.”

“It means that if you have a right to speak in the Par­lia­ment and there is a res­o­lu­tion, you weigh on the side of the pub­lic in­ter­est, you weigh on the side of al­low­ing mem­bers to speak. That is the right of free­dom of speech,” he said.

He said again that on the day of the mo­tion, Par­lia­ment “mut­ed the mi­cro­phones” of the UNC. This ac­cu­sa­tion was al­so made dur­ing the mo­tion and An­nisette-George de­nied mut­ing the mi­cro­phones. She said that the en­thu­si­as­tic desk-thump­ing by the Op­po­si­tion was re­spon­si­ble for the tech­ni­cal glitch.

“This is not the first time this has hap­pened, it is ha­bit­u­al,” Ho­sein said yes­ter­day.

“Mo­tions are for de­bate,” he added.

On Thurs­day, Row­ley crit­i­cised the short mo­tion read by the Op­po­si­tion leader and said that she had to in­clude all the par­tic­u­lars she wished to dis­cuss with­in that mo­tion. He not­ed that there is no room for amend­ments or ex­pan­sions af­ter the mo­tion is sub­mit­ted, and the process must stick with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of on­ly what is sub­mit­ted. Row­ley said then that if Per­sad-Bisses­sar want­ed to sub­mit 500 pages, she could have done so.

But Ho­sein yes­ter­day said this is sim­ply not true. He said a mo­tion can­not be over 250 words.

“So that is a very fool­ish and child­ish ar­gu­ment that the Prime Min­is­ter is mak­ing. How can you de­tail all the par­tic­u­lars in the mo­tion when there is a word lim­it?” he asked.

The UNC has vowed to keep push­ing for re­spons­es on the PSC fi­as­co and has launched its Oc­to­ber Rev­o­lu­tion ini­tia­tive to mo­bilise its grass­roots sup­port­ers. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­so sug­gest­ed that the par­ty could al­so soon launch a mo­tion on no-con­fi­dence in Row­ley.