Chester Sam­bra­no

A re­quest by the Op­po­si­tion to have Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young sent be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment has been re­ject­ed by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo.

Ear­li­er in yes­ter­day’s sit­ting Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor, Wade Mark sug­gest­ed that Young had breached the stand­ing or­ders and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­led the House last Wednes­day, when he spoke about a May 6 con­ver­sa­tion with Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo re­gard­ing a vis­it to T&T by Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez which con­sti­tut­ed a breach of the Rio Treaty.

At that time, in the Sen­ate, Young said, “... The Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador had a con­ver­sa­tion with me, as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Cab­i­net-lev­el of the Gov­ern­ment, and there were oth­er con­ver­sa­tions had and there was no rais­ing of the breach of any treaty.”

But in a state­ment on Tues­day, Mon­del­lo “af­firmed” that he and Young did, in fact, dis­cuss the Gov­ern­ment’s March 27 meet­ing with Venezuela Vice-Pres­i­dent and that T&T had breached the Rio Treaty when Ro­driguez was al­lowed to land in the coun­try.

How­ev­er, in a re­sponse to Mon­del­lo’s state­ment, Young said his com­ments in the Up­per House were “mis­con­strued.”

“I nev­er said that the Am­bas­sador did not raise the vis­it of Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez nor did I say that the Am­bas­sador did not raise the Rio Treaty. What I said was the breach of the treaty was not raised.”

In giv­ing her de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, Kan­ga­loo said hav­ing “care­ful­ly” re­viewed the mat­ter and the chronol­o­gy of events that led to Mark’s mo­tion, “The Min­is­ter, hav­ing been pro­vid­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty by Sen­a­tor Mark to elu­ci­date on his pre­vi­ous state­ments made on May the 13th, demon­strat­ed via his re­sponse on the 19th of May, 2020, that there was no in­ten­tion to mis­lead or de­ceive the house. There is al­so no tan­gi­ble, in­de­pen­dent­ly proved con­fir­ma­tion that it was the Min­is­ter’s in­ten­tion to de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead the house.”

As a re­sult, she said there was no pri­ma fa­cie ba­sis to sup­port a ques­tion of priv­i­lege.

Ear­li­er, Mark, not­ing Mon­del­lo’s state­ment, said it ap­peared Young’s re­sponse to Mark’s ques­tion in the Sen­ate last week, “wasn’t mere­ly a con­tra­dic­tion of the Am­bas­sador’s state­ment, but an un­truth seek­ing to mis­lead the Sen­ate.”

In Sen­ate de­bate on the Re­al Es­tate Agents Bill, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Var­ma Deyal­snigh al­so said he’d not­ed “strained re­la­tions” be­tween the US and T&T.