Parliament protects privacy

She said the broadcasting guidelines drawn up by two Joint Select Committees (JSCs) give a person outside of Parliament who is slurred in the chamber a right to reply which will be published in the parliamentary record.

“They confer upon every person aggrieved by statements made about him or her in the course of parliamentary proceedings, a right to apply to the Parliament to have a reply placed on the parliamentary record.”

She said MPs almost uniquely have an absolute freedom of speech whereby a person aggrieved by untrue statements and false allegations has no redress under the law. “It is because of this vulnerability to false and prejudicial allegations that the Joint Select Committee surely recognised that there is a very real need to allow aggrieved persons to publicly defend themselves”.

Baboolal said the Senate President may allow such a reply/rebuttal on any of three grounds. One ground, she said, is that the offending statement involved “the unreasonable invasion of privacy.” The other two grounds are if it affects the person’s “reputation, or in respect of dealings or associations with others,” or if it causes “injury to occupation, trade, office or financial credit.”

Once the President agrees the complaint is not trite, the rebuttal is to be made by a statement read out by the Clerk of the Senate. The rebuttal may be modified and it will enjoy absolute parliamentary privilege, although she warned that any draft statements initially submitted would not have the same privilege.

She declared, “The guidelines require that the media report the reply or rebuttal if they have reported the allegations giving rise to the same.”

Baboolal said this right of reply will now require all Senators to “avoid any abuse of parliamentary privilege and to exercise restraint made in statements made in the course of parliamentary proceedings, notwithstanding that honourable members’ freedom of speech is undiminished and that you still have full and absolute parliamentary privilege for what you say in this Senate.” She said this was the dawn of a new era in Parliament.

Sources said yesterday that while the Constitution espouses the right to a “private and family life,” Baboolal’s statement alludes to broader privacy-rights which are not in fact otherwise recognised in the laws of Trinidad and Tobago, and which conversely might be seen as breaching well-established constitutional rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the media.