DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les is ask­ing Par­lia­ment to re­fer House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh to the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges, ac­cus­ing him of bias, con­tempt of Par­lia­ment and fail­ing to de­clare a con­flict of in­ter­est dur­ing a key par­lia­men­tary in­quiry in­to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pro­cure­ment.

The move stems from Singh’s role as chair­man of the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC), which ex­am­ined the State’s ac­qui­si­tion and man­age­ment of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in the pub­lic health sys­tem.

In an eight-page let­ter to Deputy Speak­er Dr Aiy­na Ali yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les al­leges that the Speak­er breached par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege and should have re­cused him­self from the in­quiry due to pub­lic com­ments be­fore as­sum­ing of­fice.

The let­ter ref­er­ences a De­cem­ber 2024 Dai­ly Ex­press ar­ti­cle in which Singh, speak­ing as an at­tor­ney, spoke about al­leged “drug car­tels” in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor. Ac­cord­ing to the ar­ti­cle, Singh said he had re­ceived com­plaints from clients about dif­fi­cul­ties im­port­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, in­clud­ing claims of bu­reau­crat­ic re­sis­tance and de­lays in the ap­proval process.

Gon­za­les ar­gues that those state­ments cre­at­ed the ap­pear­ance of bias, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the PAAC in­quiry lat­er ex­am­ined sim­i­lar is­sues in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pro­cure­ment sys­tem.

The Op­po­si­tion con­tends that at no point dur­ing the com­mit­tee’s nine meet­ings did Singh de­clare any rel­e­vant in­ter­est or step aside from the pro­ceed­ings.

It fur­ther ac­cus­es the Speak­er of act­ing in an “ad­ver­sar­i­al” man­ner dur­ing pub­lic hear­ings, al­leg­ing he re­lied on ma­te­r­i­al that on­ly he and Sen­a­tor David Nakhid had ac­knowl­edged pos­sess­ing.

The mo­tion al­so cites Er­sk­ine May, the au­thor­i­ta­tive guide on par­lia­men­tary prac­tice, which states that com­mit­tee mem­bers must dis­close rel­e­vant in­ter­ests and that chair­per­sons should stand aside where a per­son­al or fi­nan­cial in­ter­est may af­fect the work of the com­mit­tee.

Gon­za­les is ask­ing the Deputy Speak­er to grant leave for the mat­ter to be treat­ed as a ques­tion of priv­i­lege, which would al­low Singh to be re­ferred to the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath dis­missed the mo­tion as a dis­trac­tion.

“I have not seen the mo­tion; there­fore, I will not want to prej­u­dice the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the mat­ter. How­ev­er, what is cu­ri­ous, em­bar­rass­ing and hyp­o­crit­i­cal of the Op­po­si­tion is that they found the time to file a mo­tion against the Speak­er but can­not break their deaf­en­ing si­lence on Sen­a­tor John-Bates and Al-Rawi’s al­leged mis­con­duct. The Op­po­si­tion’s hypocrisy knows no bounds. The Op­po­si­tion has no moral au­thor­i­ty to stand on, in light of their weeks of si­lence on the on­go­ing de­ba­cle and scan­dal sur­round­ing John-Bates and Al-Rawi.”

Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates re­signed one week ago, af­ter ac­knowl­edg­ing that she edit­ed a wit­ness state­ment sub­mit­ted to the PAAC by for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, with track changes left vis­i­ble in the doc­u­ment. John-Bates was a mem­ber of the PAAC at the time. Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi al­so made ed­its to the same doc­u­ment, but has stat­ed he did so as Deyals­ingh’s le­gal coun­sel. Un­like John-Bates, he is not a mem­ber of the PAAC.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Singh re­fused to com­ment, say­ing he did not want to prej­u­dice the mat­ter.

Both John-Bates and Al-Rawi have been re­ferred to the priv­i­leges com­mit­tee.

For­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed, who held the post from 1987-1991, de­scribed the de­vel­op­ment as trou­bling.

“We are ac­tu­al­ly dig­ging deep­er in­to this im­broglio. ... Un­less we are unit­ed in this and un­less we are pre­pared to put aside all of this bac­cha­nal—we are play­ing ole mass in this coun­try 365 days of the year—and it is time that some of us get up and talk about these things be­cause we are hurt­ing, our coun­try is hurt­ing too bad­ly. And every­body is so dis­mayed as to what is hap­pen­ing and we can­not get a col­lec­tive voice.”

Mo­hammed added, “I hope that the politi­cians will un­der­stand this and put their heads to­geth­er and put aside all these pet­ty non­sense that is tak­ing place and all this squab­bling that is tak­ing place and set a bet­ter ex­am­ple for the coun­try with re­spect to our be­hav­iour and con­duct in the par­lia­ment. Par­lia­ment is be­ing brought in­to dis­re­pute on a dai­ly ba­sis, and none of us are say­ing any­thing about it.”

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath al­so de­scribed the mo­tion as a di­ver­sion.

“Clear­ly, this is the PNM at­tempt­ing to change the nar­ra­tive from what John-Bates and they did. And the mere fact that they have not de­cid­ed to treat the John Bates is­sue, they are look­ing for some oth­er way to un­der­mine the en­tire func­tion­ing of the com­mit­tee.”

“There’s no law, but there’s the sim­ple thing or ba­sic thing of ethics and in­tegri­ty. And there was, clear­ly, a lack of ethics and in­tegri­ty in how she be­haved.”

He said he does not be­lieve the mat­ters will be treat­ed sep­a­rate­ly in the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.