| …eight months on and the $4B fiasco still not addressedAlmost eight months after the Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran ruled that a prima facie case for contempt of the House had been made against Minister of Housing and Water Irfaan Ali and was sent to the committee of privileges which is akin to a parliamentary trial the body is yet to meet.It was the Alliance for Change (AFC) Presidential Candidate who had moved the course of action by way of a parliamentary motion.Despite the initial success,Jerseys From China Online, Ramjattan is now fuming and describing the delay as a perversion of the course of justice.He said that his party finds the situation to be abominable since the Speaker of the National Assembly did find that a prima facie case was made against Ali.Ramjattan said that they had damaging evidence against Ali and is certain that the Committee would have no choice but to find Ali guilty once it meets.It is the Speaker of the National Assembly that has to convene the meeting and according to Ramjattan, he has approached him on the matter and was told that there are matters being deliberated at the moment.Ramjattan says that the Speaker had promised that the meeting will be convened as early as possible but he had little faith in Ramkarran’s promise.Ramjattan says that he is very worried that Parliament will be dissolved and Ali will never be brought to justice.Parliament will have to be dissolved in August and should the matter not be brought up for hearing before then it cannot be brought up again.Ramjattan has previously lamented the sloth at which the committee is taking to convene. He has speculated that it may have something to do with the fact that the Attorney General Charles Ramson who is a member of the committee cannot vote.Minister of Housing and Water Irfaan Ali He is not a member of the list of candidates and as such is in the National Assembly as a technocrat.The chairman of the Privileges Committee who is also the Speaker of the National Assembly, is also not allowed to vote and as such Ramjattan posited that they government did not want to find themselves in the same quagmire they were in last July when they met.He explained that back then, they had met on the Debbie Backer issue and the opposition votes had outnumbered the Government votes and as such they sought a deferral.He did suggest that it was deliberate in that the government was just “circling the wagon just to save their Minister.”It was in August last year that Ramjattan made good on his promise to seek to have disciplinary action instituted against Ali and Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh when he moved a motion to have the two government officials placed before the Committee of Privileges.A prima facie case was not made out against Dr Singh.The action stems from what Ramjattan said was the deliberate misleading of the National Assembly as it relates to a $4B expenditure that was debated in January, 2010 in a supplementary request but was later found to be spent the previous year.Ramjattan told the House that in January of last year Ali, during consideration of a Financial Paper, told the House in response to a question from the Alliance For Change’s Sheila Holder, that the provision of $4B “is ready to be spent for Housing Development.”This Ramjattan said was meant to suggest that the monies were yet to be spent. But subsequently in February last year when the Budget Estimates were produced, it was realised that the monies had already been disbursed since the previous year.Ramjattan told the Speaker of the House when he presented his motion that when the Estimates of the 2010 Budget were being considered in February the Housing Minister,Wholesale NFL Jerseys Online, “evaded, avoided and flagrantly refused to answer questions put to him concerning when exactly the $4B was spent,Cheap Jerseys From China Online, thereby failing to offer any credible clarification.Ramjattan in his motion called for the House to signal its unanimous disapproval of Ali’s misleading statement and asked that the matter be referred to the Privileges Committee in keeping with the Parliamentary Standing.He wanted by way of the motion to have Ali found in contempt of “this Honourable House in relation to the said statement and a determination as to the sanction that should be taken against Irfaan Ali for misleading this Honourable House.”Speaker of the House Ralph Ramkarran in his ruling told the members gathered that a prima facie case was found to be made out against the Housing Minister for him to be committed to the Committee of Privileges.The Speaker did caution that his ruling did not mean that Ali was guilty of any of the allegations against him but simply that there was enough merit in the accusations to have him be asked to defend himself in that Committee of Privileges.Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh who was the target of a similar motion was spared the wrath as the Speaker said a prima facie case was not made out against him and as such that motion was dismissed.Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran In that motion against Dr Singh, Ramjattan said that the Minister in a Financial Paper in January sought approval for the Supplementary Appropriations of a sum of $6.6B and in that document it was outlined that a sum of $4B was being sought as provision for housing development.Ramjattan was adamant in his charge that by seeking approval of the National Assembly of this sum of $4B on January 11, 2010, the Minister of Finance was representing to the National Assembly that the sum was to be spent on a date after the day when the National Assembly would have approved the expenditure.He again pointed out that when the Finance Minister presented the 2010 budget it was shown that the $4B asked for in January of this year was represented as spent in 2009.Ramjattan in his motion charged that there is a patent contradiction with regard to the representation of the Minister of Finance as it relates to the $4B expenditure, and as such he should be placed before the Committee of Privileges.Ramjattan in an interview with this newspaper following the rulings said that he was not satisfied with the ruling with respect to the Finance Minister in that he still believes a case was made to have him be placed before the Committee of Privileges.Ramjattan is adamant that both Ministers deliberately misled the National Assembly.When asked about the worst case scenario as it relates to penalties that could be imposed against Ali, Ramjattan said that he could be removed from Parliament because of his actions, adding that in any other democracy, both Ministers would have been forced to resign.“It is quite clear that there has been a misleading of the House.”Ramjattan said that, “to lie in Parliament is fundamentally a breach of the conventions and privileges…you do not lie to Parliament and that is exactly what they did here.”He said that what the two Ministers have done was to blow asunder the confidence and credibility of any answers that would be coming from Ministers in the House.The AFC Chairman said that the approval of expenditure is in the hands of the entire National Assembly and not just in the hands of a Minister, emphasising that what Dr Singh and Minister Ali did was to “usurp Parliament’s power.”AFC Presidential Candidate Khemraj RamjattanThe Committee of Privileges is chaired by Speaker of the House Ralph Ramkarran.Government members of that Committee include Prime Minister Samuel Hinds,Wholesale Jerseys Online, Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee, Minister of Culture,Cheap NFL Jerseys Online, Youth and Sport Dr Frank Anthony, Donald Ramotar, Indranie Chandarpal and Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Charles Ramson.PNCR members of the committee include Dave Danny,Cheap Jerseys Online, Dr. John Austin and Cheryl Sampson while the AFC member is David Patterson. |
