Speaker scuttled the FATCA debate

FATCA was the main item on the Order Paper.

The role of the Opposition was very critical at that sitting in both the amendments stage as well as in the final vote, having regard to the fact that the FATCA Bill is an exact replica of the 2015 People’s Partnership draft, as were the current Gambling and failed Bail Bills.

Without the Opposition being present, the sitting was a glorified waste of parliamentary time as it turned out to be. Without the presence of Leader of the Opposition Kamla Persad-Bissessar at the sitting, being its chief spokesman on the Bill, the Opposition could and would not participate in the scheduled negotiations of the committee of the whole at that sitting.

Walking out with its leader was the logical response.

So that when Persad- Bissessar failed in her request to the Speaker to get her motion on the murder rate debated as a matter of definite, urgent and public importance there was indeed some mild disorder. But it was not sufficiently disruptive, in my view, to cause the Speaker to summarily and impulsively suspend from the sitting both the Leader of the Opposition and member for Naparima.

The Speaker has previously, regularly and quite arbitrarily suspended other members of the Opposition as if they were her infant students for minor misdemeanours and quite acceptable levels of banter/cross talk in the House. The House is not a church.

Anger cannot be used as a management/ control tool from the Speaker’s chair. Maturity, discretion, fairness, judgment and good sense are the tools of effective House Speakers.

On this occasion, taking into account the urgency of the FATCA debate that began on September 9 and the February deadline given by the US Treasury Department for passage of the Bill in Parliament, as well as the key role of the Leader of the Opposition that the Speaker will be privy to prior to the sitting, she should have adjourned the House for a 15-minute cooling- off period rather than suspend the key player in the subsequent debate. Suspension is an avoidable affront to constituents.

What am I to make of the immediate withdrawal of the Speaker from the House post the ill-timed suspension and the chairing of the FATCA monologue by Deputy Speaker Esmond Forde? Stephen Kangal Caroni