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Saturday, February 15, 2025

Moonilal to raise Speaker’s action in Paria Fuel deal today

by

Gail Alexander
1695 days ago
20200625
Dr Roodal Moonilal

Dr Roodal Moonilal

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal will pi­lot de­bate at to­day’s Par­lia­ment sit­ting on whether House Speak­er Bridgitte An­nisette-George failed to act prop­er­ly in a mat­ter he tried to raise in April on the con­tro­ver­sial Paria Fu­el Trad­ing fu­el ship­ment ES Eu­ro Ship­ping.

A mo­tion on this filed by Mooni­lal is list­ed on Par­lia­ment’s agen­da for de­bate in to­day’s pro­ceed­ings.

It con­cerns Mooni­lal’s at­tempt on April 27 to move the ad­journ­ment of the Low­er House to dis­cuss a def­i­nite mat­ter of ur­gent pub­lic im­por­tance. This was based on Stand­ing Or­der 17. The mat­ter he pro­posed for dis­cus­sion con­cerned al­leged sale by Paria of fu­el to ES Eu­ro which al­leged­ly end­ed up be­ing sent to Venezuela in con­tra­ven­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al sanc­tions. The Op­po­si­tion had al­leged that had oc­curred but the Gov­ern­ment and Paria had struck down the claims.

But when Mooni­lal raised the mat­ter on April 27 it wasn’t al­lowed for de­bate by the Speak­er.

Mooni­lal’s mo­tion to­day claims that the Speak­er, in rul­ing that the mat­ter didn’t qual­i­fy un­der Stand­ing Or­der 17, “failed to de­clare a pos­si­ble con­flict of in­ter­est.”

His mo­tion al­so notes that on May 8, in the af­ter­math of her rul­ing, the Speak­er had “re­buked and con­demned him for re­port­ing else­where” - mak­ing com­ments - on the mat­ter.

His mo­tion claims that since the Speak­er “com­mit­ted a breach of the es­tab­lished rules of con­duct and con­ven­tions” of the Low­er House and “brought the high and no­ble Of­fice of the Speak­er in­to dis­re­pute,” that the House should cen­sure the Speak­er “for her fail­ure to act prop­er­ly and im­par­tial­ly in the ex­er­cise of her of­fice.”

Dur­ing re­cent months of pub­lic de­bate by the Op­po­si­tion on the fu­el sal, UNC mem­bers at vir­tu­al meet­ings had called for sanc­tions on cer­tain state of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Paria chair­man New­man George.

Paria Fuel Trading CompanyPoliticsParliament


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