DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC) chair­man Jagdeo Singh yes­ter­day is­sued a for­mal apol­o­gy to Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle, af­ter be­ing ac­cused by Op­po­si­tion mem­bers of mak­ing a dis­re­spect­ful and in­ap­pro­pri­ate re­mark dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings.

The ex­change oc­curred as Mar­celle at­tempt­ed to get clar­i­ty from Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, De­vesh Ma­haraj, on how much of the $54 mil­lion re­quest­ed as sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing for le­gal fees would be used to pay at­tor­neys for past mat­ters ver­sus fu­ture cas­es.

How­ev­er, be­fore Ma­haraj could re­spond, Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein in­ter­ject­ed, ac­cus­ing the Op­po­si­tion of hypocrisy for ques­tion­ing Gov­ern­ment spend­ing on le­gal ser­vices.

“I know to­day is Mon­day but to­day is not the UNC Mon­day Night Fo­rum,” quipped the Laven­tille West MP in re­sponse.

As Mar­celle at­tempt­ed to press his in­quiry fur­ther, Singh in­ter­rupt­ed, com­ment­ing on Mar­celle’s pro­fes­sion­al back­ground.

“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…”

This re­mark prompt­ed Port of Spain North/St Ann’s West MP and for­mer En­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young to ob­ject strong­ly.

“Mr Speak­er, what does a mem­ber be­ing ad­mit­ted to the bar have to do with any­thing? So is it that on­ly lawyers can ask ques­tions re­lat­ed to fees?”

Mar­celle, clear­ly frus­trat­ed, re­spond­ed by re­peat­ed­ly shout­ing: “It is high­ly dis­re­spect­ful!”

MP for Diego Mar­tin North/East and for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert al­so con­demned the chair­man’s in­ter­ven­tion.

“Mr chair­man, I have par­tic­i­pat­ed in at least 40 fi­nance com­mit­tee meet­ings al­ready, 15 of which would have been un­der the UNC. This is the first fi­nance com­mit­tee meet­ing where I see the chair­man, your good self, ven­tur­ing opin­ions, seek­ing to clar­i­fy state­ments made. It is sim­ply wrong. It is wrong!”

Singh ini­tial­ly de­fend­ed his ac­tions, say­ing: “All I can say is that I am sim­ply try­ing to help the process along ... I am sim­ply adding con­text.”

But Im­bert re­mained firm in his crit­i­cism.

“Chair­man, you are not sup­posed to get in­volved in the dis­cus­sion.”

Recog­nis­ing the back­lash, Singh con­ced­ed that his com­ment may have been in­ap­pro­pri­ate and of­fered an apol­o­gy to Mar­celle.

“If you are of the view... for that I apol­o­gise sin­cere­ly. Mem­ber for Laven­tille West, I did not mean—and I said I meant—to be as least dep­re­ca­to­ry as pos­si­ble. It was not in­tend­ed to be that way. I sim­ply was lend­ing a con­text to the ques­tion be­cause we’ve been spend­ing a lot of time on a ques­tion that the two min­is­ters have an­swered.”

Singh then moved on to the next item on the agen­da.