The Parliamentary Opposition has refused to participate in Prime Minister’s Questions, accusing the Government of turning the parliamentary exercise into a “shameful parliamentary charade” designed to shield Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar from scrutiny.
In a statement yesterday, the Opposition said more than 90 per cent of the questions it submitted for the Prime Minister to answer had been denied.
It also accused the Government of preventing the Opposition from asking supplemental questions arising from the Prime Minister’s answers and statements.
The Opposition said Prime Minister’s Questions was introduced into the Standing Orders in 2014, along with Practice Directions issued under then Speaker Wade Mark, as a mechanism to hold the Prime Minister directly accountable to Parliament and the people.
It said the practice had since been “systematically undermined”.
The Opposition contrasted the current situation with the period when former Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley was in office, saying he attended Prime Minister’s Questions and subjected himself to supplemental questions from the then Opposition.
The Opposition also criticised Persad-Bissessar’s attendance in Parliament, saying she had been absent for the entire month of September and had returned for the first time since the annual August recess.
“The Opposition will not participate in that pretence,” the statement said.
It said the refusal to participate was also linked to wider concerns about the Government’s handling of parliamentary questions.
“Government Ministers are increasingly invoking Standing Orders to avoid answering critical questions involving matters of significant public interest,” the Opposition said.
It also claimed supplemental questions to Ministers were being blocked, while Questions on Notice were being “routinely denied, deferred or delayed”.
The Opposition called for an urgent meeting of the Standing Orders Committee to address what it described as a deterioration in parliamentary accountability.
It also called for supplemental questions to the Prime Minister to be restored during Prime Minister’s Questions.
“The Parliament belongs to the people of Trinidad and Tobago,” the Opposition said. “It must never be transformed into an instrument for shielding a Prime Minister or Government from accountability.”
