Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment Stu­art Young and Bri­an Man­ning are call­ing for the ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion of House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh to ad­dress al­le­ga­tions of bias in­volv­ing par­lia­men­tary staff and con­cerns sur­round­ing the con­duct of Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath.

This comes days af­ter a for­mal let­ter signed by Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and 12 oth­er Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MPs seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on re­ports that com­plaints had al­leged­ly been made re­gard­ing bias, par­tial­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism among par­lia­men­tary staff.

Ac­cord­ing to the cor­re­spon­dence, the Op­po­si­tion be­came aware of al­le­ga­tions that mi­cro­phones used by Gov­ern­ment mem­bers were be­ing mut­ed dur­ing House pro­ceed­ings.

The MPs said they were not in­formed of any such com­plaints and are now seek­ing de­tails on when the con­cerns were raised, who re­ceived them, whether in­ves­ti­ga­tions were con­duct­ed and what find­ings, if any, were made.

The Op­po­si­tion de­scribed the al­le­ga­tions as se­ri­ous, ar­gu­ing that they strike at the in­tegri­ty, in­de­pen­dence and prop­er func­tion­ing of Par­lia­ment and there­fore re­quire ur­gent clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

The let­ter al­so raised con­cerns about an in­ci­dent dur­ing last Fri­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee pro­ceed­ings in which Padarath was al­leged­ly seen pho­tograph­ing or record­ing a mem­ber of the par­lia­men­tary staff while the of­fi­cer was car­ry­ing out of­fi­cial du­ties.

The MPs have re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion on whether the Speak­er was in­formed of the in­ci­dent, whether it was re­viewed by his of­fice and what mea­sures ex­ist to pro­tect par­lia­men­tary staff from con­duct that could be per­ceived as in­tim­i­dat­ing, co­er­cive or in­ter­fer­ing with the in­de­pen­dent ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties.

Speak­ing with re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Young said the mat­ter should al­ready have been treat­ed as a top pri­or­i­ty.

“This is a mat­ter that should have al­ready ob­tained the max­i­mum pri­or­i­ty,” Young said.

He not­ed that all Op­po­si­tion MPs had signed the cor­re­spon­dence, de­scrib­ing it as an un­usu­al show of uni­ty re­flect­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the is­sue.

“We are very con­cerned, hence we all signed, which hasn’t hap­pened with any­thing I could re­mem­ber, cer­tain­ly in the last 15 years, all mem­bers of one side of the bench sign­ing a piece of cor­re­spon­dence in­di­cat­ing our deep con­cern.”

Young ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to di­vert at­ten­tion from the mat­ter and said con­cerns were be­ing ex­pressed not on­ly by par­lia­men­tary staff but al­so by pub­lic ser­vants and mem­bers of the wider pub­lic.

Mean­while, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning said the Op­po­si­tion viewed the is­sue as ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous and stressed that par­lia­men­tary staff must be able to per­form their du­ties with­out feel­ing pres­sured or in­tim­i­dat­ed.

“We think it was a very se­ri­ous is­sue. The par­lia­men­tary staff shouldn’t have to feel that they’re be­ing pres­sured to do their jobs or to not do their jobs,” Man­ning said.

He added that Op­po­si­tion MPs were dis­turbed by what tran­spired dur­ing the com­mit­tee pro­ceed­ings and ex­pressed hope that swift ac­tion would be tak­en.

“We were very, very dis­turbed by what hap­pened in the cham­ber that evening, and we hope that some­thing is done quick­ly about it.”

House Speak­er Singh was ab­sent from yes­ter­day’s par­lia­men­tary sit­ting.

Padarath has since re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that he at­tempt­ed to in­tim­i­date par­lia­men­tary staff dur­ing last Fri­day’s chaot­ic Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing, in­sist­ing in­stead that his ac­tions were aimed at iden­ti­fy­ing in­di­vid­u­als linked to what he be­lieves is a pat­tern of bias against Gov­ern­ment MPs with­in Par­lia­ment.