Gail Alexan­der

The Op­po­si­tion re­mains un­de­cid­ed about re­turn­ing to the Low­er House—even for its pri­vate Mem­bers’ Day lat­er this month—un­til there’s con­fir­ma­tion on COVID safe­ty in the Par­lia­ment.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) MP Rudy In­dars­ingh in­di­cat­ed this yes­ter­day re­gard­ing the UNC’s boy­cott of Par­lia­ment for last Fri­day’s Low­er House sit­ting, Tues­day’s Sen­ate meet­ing and Wednes­day’s Low­er House meet­ing al­so.

This was to high­light UNC’s con­cerns over COVID safe­ty and sani­ti­sa­tion of the Par­lia­ment fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­cent pos­i­tive test for COVID. He’s quar­an­tined in To­ba­go and be­ing treat­ed.

The Low­er House on Wednes­day had a 34-minute sit­ting and ad­journed to a date to be fixed.

House Leader Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said all Gov­ern­ment mat­ters on the agen­da were com­plet­ed and there were on­ly Op­po­si­tion mat­ters left, but no Op­po­si­tion mem­bers to pose them.

On the Op­po­si­tion’s boy­cott, she’d not­ed the Par­lia­ment has had strict COVID pro­to­cols since the pan­dem­ic be­gan. Oth­er of­fi­cials al­so said yes­ter­day the Par­lia­ment has COVID pro­to­cols, in­clud­ing test­ing, in place.

UNC chief whip David Lee didn’t an­swer calls. Asked when the UNC might re­turn to the Low­er House, af­ter Robin­son Reg­is’s state­ments, In­dars­ingh said he couldn’t speak for Lee or UNC’s sen­a­tors. How­ev­er, he said the UNC would do the right thing in keep­ing with safe­ty pro­to­cols and once re­quire­ments sought are met and sani­ti­sa­tion and safe­ty pro­to­cols are in place.

He said by the time Par­lia­ment re­sumes, he ex­pect­ed it would be known if any­one in the Cab­i­net, apart from the Prime Min­is­ter, test­ed pos­i­tive.

“Every gov­ern­ment di­vi­sion—even the Plan­ning Min­istry, EBC, courts, are be­ing closed for sani­ti­sa­tion where COVID cas­es are found —so why not the Par­lia­ment?”

Say­ing it was a wait­ing game of sorts, he said the UNC would be guid­ed on the re­sump­tion date by Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment of this, but he couldn’t say for cer­tain if the UNC would at­tend if sit­tings re­sume next week, or even for Pri­vate Mem­bers’ Day when Op­po­si­tion busi­ness is done. That is the fourth Fri­day of the month.

The Sen­ate meets next Tues­day. But UNC sen­a­tor Jear­lean John said there’s been no de­ci­sion on whether to at­tend.