Tilting at windmills

Although he kept calling Diego East MP Colm Imbert “Don Quixote,” it was Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday and his brother Subhas who were tilting at windmills in the Lower House last Friday.

Most of the MPs on both sides had come in early for the session, and Subhas himself carried newly-appointed Attorney General John Jeremie around to meet the members on the other side. Jeremie shook hands with Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Hamza Rafeek and Harry Partap, all of whom smiled and chatted amiably with him. Public Utilities Minister Pennelope Beckles, who came in as the introductions were taking place, also joined the group for a few minutes. As the session commenced with Government Ministers answering questions filed by the UNC, the Opposition got down to business. Energy Minister Eric Williams took the first blows when he disclosed that the National Gas Company was in negotiations with an unnamed company and part of the deal was that the second party would be kept secret. “Would you say that approach is consistent with transparency and accountability?” asked Chief Whip Ganga Singh. “Yes,” Williams laconically replied.

Education Minister Hazel Manning also had to answer a question posed by Kamla Persad Bissessar about the provision of credit cards to parents to purchase school supplies. Mrs Manning read a prepared statement, giving the background to the credit cards idea, which aroused the ire of Couva South MP Kelvin Ramnath. “Answer the question!” he said loudly. “You come here to make a speech?” Although Hazel’s falsetto faltered a little, she continued reading steadily as Ramnath, not realising that there is a difference between being a maverick and being a boor, continued his harangue. “This is why citizens have no respect for this Parliament!” he said, without a trace of irony.

This lack of irony continued when Ganga Singh got up to move for the House sitting to be deferred for an urgent matter of public importance: not the murder rate or the health system or school violence or even flooding in Central. No, Singh was worried about the damaged runway at the Piarco airport; and Speaker Barry Sinanan denied the motion. Jeremie then rose to move a motion to approve the report of the Select Committee on the Integrity Act forms. The Committee had been made up of Government and Opposition MPs and Independent Senators and, contrary to the prediction made by Kamla Persad-Bissessar some weeks earlier, had not been buried there. Indeed, Jeremie noted that all the committee members had been unanimous in their conclusions, and he even thanked the Opposition for all their help.

This took the wind of the UNC’s sails, so when he rose to respond Subhas Panday was forced to blow a lot of hot air to propel the clumsy bark of his reply. “I congratulate the Attorney General on his maiden speech here,” he said, adding, “He sounded like a maiden, but this is a place of rough riders.” This was a joke that Subhas’s brother might, possibly, have carried off, but Subhas always comes across as an inferior version of Basdeo. The younger Panday raved on for about 25 minutes, working himself into a fierceness that seemed merely effete where Basdeo would have been cutting. Subhas argued that it was the UNC who had foiled the PNM’s attempt to water down the Integrity legislation — indeed, that the Act itself “was a result of the insistence of the members of the Opposition.” At the end of this tirade, Jeremie, who is congenitally stolid in his demeanour, thanked the Princes Town MP for his “colourful, if highly-strung, response” and noted that there was “very little of substance for me to reply to.”

Labour Minister Larry Achong rose next to introduce a Bill for which he gave the UNC full credit, since the legislation to extend the legal protection offered to employees had been first laid when they were in office. But the fact that it was their own Bill being debated did not prevent UNC leader Basdeo Panday from talking for almost his full 75 minutes in response. “O hypocrisy, how shameless thou art,” he intoned, truthfully but also without irony. Panday gave a history of labour legislation in Trinidad and quoted the Hansard at those PNM members who had opposed the same Bill when the UNC had introduced it. Imbert, it turned out, had objected most strenuously to various clauses, all of which had remained unchanged in the present Bill. “You supporting it now or not? Panday asked him.

MPs Roger Boynes, Jarette Narine and Hedwige Bereaux also came in for some lambasting, but Panday reserved his special venom for Imbert. “He is the one that is most insolent in this House,” he said, going on to throw words about Imbert’s professional activities as an engineer, so that the Speaker had to warn Panday about imputing improper motives to a Member. But, given that the Government was passing a Bill that the UNC could not criticise, and given that the UNC had abandoned its policy of not supporting any Government legislation without Constitutional reform, Panday came across as criticising just for criticism’s sake.

The Bill was duly passed, with Achong’s assurance that, contrary to the suspicion voiced by Panday, it would not be delayed in Select Committee. Then Leader of Government Business Ken Valley, more than usually jovial, rose at 3.53 pm to ask the Speaker to adjourn the House. But, before doing so, Valley said he had to note that it was “an historic day” in the House and one which he hoped signified “a change in the camaraderie of Parliament.” However, the adjournment had to  be delayed till the usual time of 4.30, so that Ganga Singh could raise his concern about the recently spilled sewage, ie the sewage that had polluted WASA’s water supply last month.