It took close to three months but Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has fi­nal­ly for­mal­ly apol­o­gised to the Low­er House for the "snake have lead for you" com­ment he made to­wards Laven­tille West MP Fitzger­ald Hinds.

In late June, the Par­lia­ment's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee found that com­ments Dr Mooni­lal made in Oc­to­ber 2018 war­rant­ed an apol­o­gy not on­ly to Hinds but to the en­tire house. The state­ment stems from Par­lia­ment's adop­tion on Wednes­day of the priv­i­leges com­mit­tee re­port which called for Mooni­lal to apol­o­gise to Hinds for al­leged “threat­en­ing” words ut­tered to Hinds in a bud­get cross-talk on Oc­to­ber 10, 2018.

It was al­leged he told Hinds “that’s why snake have lead for you.” PNM's Stu­art Young said, “lead” was a term for bul­lets and “snake” was the alias of a man charged with as­sault­ing Hinds in Beetham in 2018.

While Mooni­lal apol­o­gised in­for­mal­ly in Ju­ly, to­day in the Low­er House he of­fered a brief for­mal apol­o­gy.

"With ref­er­ence to the re­port of the com­mit­tee of priv­i­leges al­le­ga­tion of threat­en­ing words dat­ed June 18, 2019 and pur­suant to the rec­om­men­da­tion there­in and with­out prej­u­dice to my le­gal mat­ter, I ex­tend an apol­o­gy to the house and the mem­ber for Laven­tille West for the words deemed threat­en­ing."

The le­gal mat­ter Dr Mooni­lal is re­fer­ring to is his chal­lenge to the com­po­si­tion of the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee.