Senators discuss Parliamentary self-regulation

However, they disagreed on the approach.

Gopee-Scoon said it is not something to be rushed to a Joint Select Committee (JSC) while Mahabir said there is merit in this avenue. They both made contributions yesterday on a motion, put forward by Opposition Senator Wade Mark, which called for the establishment of a JSC to consider and report, within three months, a legislative formula for Parliamentary autonomy.

Responding to Mark’s remark about, “the Parliament being a plaything of the executive,” Gopee- Scoon said, “I too felt the wrath, the big stick of the executive.

Not the bungalow.” In 2015, prior to a change in government, Gopee-Scoon said, she was chosen to represent the then Opposition on a mission to Malta. Air travel tickets bought and hours before she was due to travel, Gopee- Scoon said she was informed she was no longer going to Malta. “I had bathed already, packed. Parliament gave me my cheque the day before and a bag with wrapped gifts,” she said. Gopee-Scoon said she called to speak with the then House Speaker (Senatyor Mark), but was told she could not speak with him.

“When I probed a little deeper as to where this was coming from, I was told the Prime Minister (Kamla Persad-Bissessar) said I was not to go,” she said. This, Gopee-Scoon said, was the Executive treating Parliament as its plaything and “hijacking” the work of the Parliament. “I felt it. It was wrong.

There was a cost attached to it. It was not only financial...

it was diplomatic,” Gopee-Scoon said.

“We have to fix these things. We have to be treated with respect.

This must not happen again.” This Government, she said, is not afraid of parliamentary autonomy. While saying three months is not sufficient to deal with the issue of parliamentary autonomy, Gopee-Scoon said Parliament is due to go on recess at the end of June. She asked that the motion be amended. For his part, Senator Mahabir said there is a need to look at an autonomous Parliament with its own financing and a committee to which parliamentarians can plead their case, so the situation raised by Gopee-Scoon, will not occur again.

On his personal experience, Mahabir said he was invited to a parliamentary conference on economic development in London.

The organisers would have defrayed part of the cost, once he committed to making a presentation.

Government, Mahabir said, was not sending a representative and the Opposition’s representative was not going.

Mahabir was willing to go. He made overtures to the government to help fund his participation. He was denied.

Mahabir said there was merit in having a JSC meet in public with stakeholders and although Parliament will go on recess, he said there was a mechanism to allow for work from one session to be carried over to the next.

Mahabir said the current state of the Red House and President’s Residence, could have been remedied if Parliament had complete autonomy.