Poor piloting in Parliament

Speaker Barry Sinanan also spent an inordinate amount of time looking at documents and what appeared to be a law book — something he never did before passing his ruling that TV cameras were to focus on the MP who was speaking and on the chair when the Speaker spoke. And the MPs who spoke that afternoon seemed idiosyncratically circumspect. It may be that the live broadcast made them less inclined to gallery. But it certainly didn’t improve the content of their contributions. Imbert, in laying the one-clause amendment which would allow non-Caricom persons to pilot a ship in Trinidad and Tobago waters, began by saying, “I hesitate to say that this is a simple Bill, because whenever those words are uttered in this House we often get a 75-minute presentation from the other side.” Imbert, however, was proven wrong: Opposition MPs Roodal Moonilal, Adesh Nanan, Manohar Ramsaran, and Chandresh Sharma each spoke for about 40 minutes. But, since the amendment was indeed a simple one, all of the speakers except Ramsaran proved yet again that politics requires the ability to talk without saying anything — and the substance of what Ramsaran said had little to do with the Bill.

Moonilal spoke first, starting off by summarising what the Member for Diego Martin East had said. “I wanted to begin by indicating,” he said, even though he had already been speaking for two minutes, — that the classification of job we are dealing with is a very sensitive one.”

Moonilal said that there was a shortage of pilots in the country — only 25, whereas what was needed was 28 and, in the future, 43. He didn’t say where he got these figures from, only saying “I am informed” and asserting the Imbert wouldn’t know this — which, if true, would have made Moonilal’s sources even more interesting. But his information, if correct, was the only hard fact offered in his contribution. The rest was taken by asserting that security measures in TT were dictated by the Homeland Security Department in the United States. This, said Moonilal, meant that the Government would abdicate its responsibility to run security checks on the foreign ship’s pilots. But that leap seemed a mere hop when, somehow, he managed to bring in CEPEP and road toll charges into his contribution.

Nanan, who spoke after, began in usual fashion with what he sees as erudition and what everyone else sees as a threat: “I will show the House how this particular guild of piloting started way back and how it originated, because it is IMPORTANT!” And every time Nanan uses that adjective, the audience can rest assured that he is about to foist some trivialities upon them. In this case, the trivia was that “in ancient times” territorial limit of waters around countries used to be three miles, because three miles was the range of cannons.

It was Chaguanas MP Manohar Ramsaran who added some energy to the contributions. He gave a witty twist when he pointed out that the Pilotage Act had come to the House twice before, and on each occasion the Ministers — Jerlean John and Franklin Khan — had lost their portfolios right after. “The point is, this is a dangerous Bill,” Ramsaran said. He also quoted Imbert from the Hansard, when the Bill had been presented before, with Imbert flatly refusing to support the legislation. But the real amusement began when Ramsaran read out the MPs who had voted against the Bill, which had been laid in 2001: amongst them were Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, Trevor Sudama, and Ralph Maraj. As Ramsaran read out these names, Kamla Persad Bissessar, smiling happily, turned in her chair to listen to him: even though Ramsaran is one of the most outspoken critics of Basdeo Panday.

Sharma spoke next, but the only sentence in his contribution that referred to the Bill was a query:

“How is this Bill adding value to people’s lives?” He might have also asked this of his own speech. He said the Government should be dealing with the high grocery prices, lack of drugs in health centres, and lack of security in the port. It was this last that made up all of his contribution.

“I will relate this to the Bill in one and a half minutes,” said Sharma when he began. But, 25 minutes later, the Speaker was forced to warn Sharma. “You are talking about the port. We are dealing with pilotage.”

“I bow to your ruling, Mr Speaker,” said Sharma; but that sentence turned out to be the same calibre as his testimony about the teacup brawl. And, although at one point he claimed that thousands of people were watching the Parliament Channel, the contributions of the MPs that afternoon showed that, if it were a commercial concern, Channel 11 would be out of business already.