AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Ex­press­ing shock at what un­fold­ed dur­ing Fri­day evening’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, a par­lia­men­tary ex­pert with vast ex­pe­ri­ence in par­lia­men­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion de­scribed the in­ci­dent as un­prece­dent­ed and mount­ed a vig­or­ous de­fence of par­lia­men­tary staff, ar­gu­ing that the con­tro­ver­sy ap­peared to stem from a mis­un­der­stand­ing of how the cham­ber’s au­dio sys­tem func­tions.

The ex­pert al­so called on the House Speak­er to make a state­ment on the mat­ter and re­as­sure par­lia­men­tary staff.

Fri­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing erupt­ed short­ly be­fore 10 pm when Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath ac­cused par­lia­men­tary broad­cast­ing per­son­nel of show­ing bias by mut­ing the mi­cro­phones of Gov­ern­ment MPs and al­leged­ly main­tain­ing high­er au­dio lev­els for Op­po­si­tion MPs.

There were al­so al­le­ga­tions, though it was not seen in the Par­lia­ment Chan­nel’s pub­lic broad­cast due to the cam­era an­gle, that Padarath left his seat and took a pic­ture of a staff mem­ber whom he be­lieved was in charge of the au­dio sys­tem.

“This is the first time in my ca­reer that I have seen some­thing like that,” the ex­pert said, re­fer­ring to re­ports that Padarath pho­tographed the staff mem­ber dur­ing the com­mit­tee pro­ceed­ings.

“To think that a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment got up and moved out of his seat to take a pic­ture of a mem­ber of staff and had him cow­er­ing be­hind his desk. These things don’t hap­pen. We fol­low West­min­ster. It doesn’t hap­pen.”

Speak­ing un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, the par­lia­men­tary ex­pert, who had more than three decades of ex­pe­ri­ence in the par­lia­ment, strong­ly de­fend­ed the em­ploy­ees and said the al­le­ga­tions re­flect­ed a mis­un­der­stand­ing of how Par­lia­ment’s au­dio sys­tem op­er­ates and in­sist­ed the staff re­spon­si­ble for broad­cast­ing pro­ceed­ings are trained to ap­ply par­lia­men­tary rules equal­ly, re­gard­less of which par­ty oc­cu­pies gov­ern­ment or op­po­si­tion bench­es.

The ex­pert ex­plained that when the Speak­er ris­es to his feet or at­tempts to re­gain con­trol of pro­ceed­ings, all oth­er mi­cro­phones in the cham­ber are au­to­mat­i­cal­ly mut­ed.

“There is a stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure.

“We stick to it in or­der to pro­tect our­selves from things like this. When­ev­er the Speak­er has con­trol of the floor, no­body else’s mi­cro­phone is on.”

The ex­pert stressed that the tech­ni­cian does not se­lec­tive­ly mute in­di­vid­ual MPs.

“The mi­cro­phone is not an in­di­vid­ual thing.

“Every time the Speak­er stands, the tech­ni­cian switch­es off all oth­er mi­cro­phones. You may think it is your mi­cro­phone alone, but all oth­er mi­cro­phones are mut­ed be­cause the Speak­er must al­ways have con­trol of the floor.”

Ac­cord­ing to the ex­pert, the same prac­tice ex­ists through­out West­min­ster-style leg­is­la­tures and is de­signed to pre­serve or­der dur­ing heat­ed ex­changes.

“This is not some PNM-UNC thing. This is how it is done not on­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go but every­where.”

The ex­pert ar­gued that MPs seat­ed on one side of the cham­ber of­ten can­not tell when mi­cro­phones on the op­po­site side have al­so been mut­ed, cre­at­ing the im­pres­sion that on­ly their side is be­ing af­fect­ed.

“It is not just one side, but they would not know that be­cause they are see­ing on­ly what is be­fore them.”

The ex­pert al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that broad­cast­ing staff could be po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, say­ing neu­tral­i­ty is one of the in­sti­tu­tion’s core val­ues.

“The staff of Par­lia­ment en­sure that mem­bers are treat­ed equal­ly, that rules and stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures are fol­lowed, and that the staff serve who­ev­er the peo­ple send us with an equal lev­el of re­spect and re­gard.

“That is some­thing im­plant­ed not just in our staff, but it is a world­wide prac­tice.”

The ex­pert de­scribed Par­lia­ment as one of the coun­try’s key de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions and said em­ploy­ees are de­lib­er­ate­ly trained to sep­a­rate per­son­al po­lit­i­cal be­liefs from their pro­fes­sion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“Every­body knows to leave their pri­vate po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ence at home. Don’t bring it in­to the House.

“It is some­thing that clerks of the House work very hard to con­trol.”

The ex­pert not­ed that par­lia­men­tary em­ploy­ees serve gov­ern­ments and op­po­si­tions of vary­ing po­lit­i­cal stripes through­out their ca­reers.

“The peo­ple can send who­ev­er they want. The Par­lia­ment’s job is to sur­round them with a kind of ser­vice that makes them feel im­por­tant be­cause they are.”

The ex­pert in par­lia­men­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion warned that pub­lic at­tacks on staff risk un­der­min­ing an in­sti­tu­tion that func­tions large­ly be­hind the scenes.

“What you all see in the fore­ground is just a shad­ow of what ac­tu­al­ly goes on.”

The ex­pert added that Par­lia­ment acts as one of the coun­try’s de­mo­c­ra­t­ic “guardrails” and that pre­serv­ing con­fi­dence in its staff is es­sen­tial.

“There is a thing go­ing on in this coun­try from all sides of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide that, if al­lowed to con­tin­ue, could de­stroy this coun­try. But in Par­lia­ment, the guardrails are in­tact. You don’t see pol­i­tics.”

While the ex­pert stopped short of call­ing for dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against Padarath, the ex­pert said the Speak­er bears re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for clar­i­fy­ing what oc­curred and re­as­sur­ing staff that they act­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

“I think the Speak­er needs to make a state­ment from the chair.

“He should ex­plain ex­act­ly how the sys­tem func­tions, that he is in charge, and that when he is try­ing to gain con­trol of the House, every­body should re­main silent , op­po­si­tion and gov­ern­ment.”

The ex­pert stressed that any state­ment from the Speak­er should ad­dress the wel­fare of the staff mem­ber at the cen­tre of the con­tro­ver­sy.

“I think this staff mem­ber, who was in­tim­i­dat­ed, needs to know that he did no wrong.

“He needs to be re­as­sured that it was a mo­ment of pas­sion.”

The ex­pert said main­tain­ing staff morale was cru­cial be­cause par­lia­men­tary em­ploy­ees ded­i­cate them­selves to serv­ing the in­sti­tu­tion rather than any po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

“We don’t want that to be dam­aged be­cause of a mo­ment of pas­sion. So the Speak­er has to re­in­force that. He has to.”