Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion MP for Arou­ca/Lopinot Mar­vin Gon­za­les has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s re­fusal to an­swer ur­gent ques­tions in Par­lia­ment re­lat­ing to the dis­missal of Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire and the ter­mi­na­tion of WASA’s ex­ec­u­tive team, call­ing it “a dark day for democ­ra­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The ques­tions were sub­mit­ted un­der the Stand­ing Or­ders as ur­gent mat­ters yes­ter­day.

Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert asked for the rea­sons be­hind Dr Hi­laire’s dis­missal, while Gon­za­les ques­tioned the im­me­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion of nine WASA ex­ec­u­tives, in­clud­ing CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath both de­clined to re­spond, in­vok­ing pub­lic in­ter­est pro­vi­sions in the Stand­ing Or­der.

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.

Op­po­si­tion mem­bers did not chal­lenge ei­ther re­fusal. No points of or­der were raised, there were no sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions, and no jeers or usu­al crosstalk fol­lowed the re­spons­es.

Hi­laire was fired on Mon­day. He has since been re­placed by Lar­ry Howai.

Hal­l­i­day was fired along­side nine of his ex­ec­u­tives on Tues­day. He was re­placed Jee­van Joseph, who was al­so giv­en a new 10-mem­ber team to steer WASA for­ward.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing dur­ing the tea break, Gon­za­les said the re­fusal marked a dis­turb­ing de­par­ture from par­lia­men­tary prac­tice.

“And what we wit­nessed to­day, to our shock and hor­ror, is that the Gov­ern­ment in­voked the Stand­ing Or­ders of the same Par­lia­ment to refuse to an­swer ques­tions re­lat­ing to the fir­ing of a Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor and the fir­ing of an en­tire ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty,” he said.

“We nev­er ex­pect to wit­ness some­thing like that. We just came out of gov­ern­ment as a par­ty, and nev­er be­fore, over the last five years serv­ing as a min­is­ter, did I ever hear a PNM min­is­ter in­vok­ing Stand­ing Or­ders not to an­swer ques­tions on mat­ters re­lat­ing to their port­fo­lio.”

Gon­za­les took di­rect aim at Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who he said watched silent­ly from the cham­ber as two of her se­nior min­is­ters de­clined to re­spond to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions.

He ar­gued that the move un­der­mined the func­tion of the Par­lia­ment as a space for pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“The peo­ple’s House where the peo­ple and cit­i­zens ex­pect the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, es­pe­cial­ly the ex­ec­u­tive arm of the Gov­ern­ment, to re­port to them on im­por­tant na­tion­al is­sues, the Gov­ern­ment to­day in­vokes Stand­ing Or­ders not to an­swer ques­tions and whilst they do so, whilst they do so, fir­ing over 10,000 peo­ple.”

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi said the coun­try still has no ex­pla­na­tion for the dis­missal of the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor, a de­ci­sion he warned could ex­pose the State to “mil­lions of dol­lars in li­a­bil­i­ty.” He al­so ques­tioned the fir­ing of 10 WASA ex­ec­u­tives, claim­ing oth­ers were hired at salaries of $50,000, $70,000 and $100,000 in the case of the CEO “with no process, no re­cruit­ment, no ad­ver­tise­ment,” and re­mind­ed the pub­lic that “there is some­thing called the pub­lic pro­cure­ment law, and that is some­thing which the op­po­si­tion will en­sure is up­held.