Ke­jan Haynes &

Da­reece Po­lo

On­ly one of nine ques­tions sub­mit­ted by Op­po­si­tion MPs to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­lowed dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tions ses­sion in Par­lia­ment.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the dis­al­lowed ques­tions cov­ered ma­jor is­sues since the new Gov­ern­ment took of­fice, in­clud­ing the emer­gency re­sponse to flood­ing in Aripo, the num­bers of in­ci­dents of vi­o­lent crime since April 29, re­cent school vi­o­lence in­ci­dents in Holy Faith Con­vent and South East Port-of -Spain, the sta­tus of the board at the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD), the cost to the State be­cause of the re­cent Cab­i­net ex­pan­sion, Petrotrin re­fin­ery ne­go­ti­a­tions, use of state re­sources for food ham­pers by NGC, and ques­tions about if gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly en­gaged in any loans or bor­row­ing.

The on­ly per­mit­ted ques­tion came from Ari­ma MP and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, who asked: “In light of deeply dis­turb­ing re­ports that an unau­tho­rised adult male al­leged­ly gained ac­cess to the com­pound of the San­ta Rosa Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School on June 2nd and was in­volved in the sex­u­al as­sault of mul­ti­ple chil­dren, can the Prime Min­is­ter in­form the coun­try what ex­act­ly tran­spired, and why this mat­ter ap­peared to go un­ad­dressed for two weeks?”

The Op­po­si­tion ex­pressed con­cern over the Speak­er’s de­ci­sion to block the re­main­ing eight ques­tions. An Op­po­si­tion MP, speak­ing anony­mous­ly, said, “It is shock­ing and scan­dalous.”

Ac­cord­ing to Stand­ing Or­der 26(1), ques­tions must ex­clude ar­gu­ments, al­le­ga­tions, opin­ions, or hy­po­thet­i­cals and re­main con­cise and fo­cused. The Speak­er al­so holds the au­thor­i­ty un­der Stand­ing Or­der 26(2) to al­ter or re­ject ques­tions deemed in­ad­mis­si­ble or an abuse of the right to ques­tion. Ques­tions in­volv­ing le­gal in­ter­pre­ta­tion, sub ju­dice mat­ters, or is­sues al­ready set­tled can al­so be ex­clud­ed.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tions seg­ment is held on the sec­ond sit­ting of each month.

Mean­while, fol­low­ing an ap­par­ent clash on Mon­day be­tween Op­po­si­tion mem­bers and Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC) chair­man Jagdeo Singh, who is al­so the House Speak­er, PNM MPs have con­firmed there is no bad blood be­tween the par­ties.

Singh for­mal­ly apol­o­gised to Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle af­ter Op­po­si­tion MPs Stu­art Young, Colm Im­bert, and Mar­celle ac­cused him of mak­ing a dis­re­spect­ful re­mark dur­ing SFC pro­ceed­ings.

Singh had com­ment­ed on Mar­celle’s pro­fes­sion­al back­ground, say­ing, “I don’t want to be even re­mote­ly dep­re­ca­to­ry. I un­der­stand that you’ve re­cent­ly been ad­mit­ted to the bar. It would be dif­fi­cult if not im­pos­si­ble for any­one, giv­en the con­text of the an­swer giv­en, to al­lo­cate per­centile amounts to past and fu­ture…”

He lat­er apol­o­gised, stat­ing he did not mean to in­sult Mar­celle.

Mar­celle, ad­dress­ing the in­ci­dent pub­licly for the first time out­side Par­lia­ment, con­firmed Singh al­so pri­vate­ly apol­o­gised.

“I ac­cept his apol­o­gy and we would move on,” he said, adding that his fo­cus re­mains on main­tain­ing par­lia­men­tary deco­rum while hold­ing the gov­ern­ment ac­count­able.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Beck­les ac­knowl­edged un­der­ly­ing ten­sions, not­ing the PNM raised con­cerns about per­ceived bias by the com­mit­tee chair­man and would mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion close­ly.

“We took the po­si­tion on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions to raise with him when we felt he was giv­ing some opin­ions. So, we will wait and see what will hap­pen. But if at any point we feel the need to raise any is­sue with him, we will do pre­cise­ly that.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Singh for com­ment yes­ter­day, but he had not re­spond­ed up to press time.