Disciplinary action mulled against Ramjattan for speaking to media

May 30, 2009 News

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The Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Economic Services is currently mulling disciplinary action against Alliance for Change Chairman, Khemraj Ramjattan, given that he had disclosed issues discussed at the committee meeting on April 17, last and appeared in this newspaper two days later.
Ramjattan, in an invited comment, expressed the Opposition parties’ dissatisfaction with the role of the committee as it relates to the Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO) Guyana.

The chairperson of that meeting, Gail Teixeira, circulated the article titled, “Opposition dissatisfied with role of Parliamentary Committee,” and informed the members that while the meeting was open “to members of the public and the media, at the said meeting neither was present…as the said member (Ramjattan) voluntarily and knowingly disclosed the discussions within the committee, the behaviour of the member was out of order.”

Teixeira then proceeded to direct the members to two sections of the Standing Orders (rules) one such reading; The deliberations of a Committee and proceedings of a Committee or a sub-committee (other than proceedings during the hearing of public evidence, where permissible by these Standing Orders or the Assembly), are not open to the public and remain strictly confidential to the Committee until it reports to the Assembly.

And the second reading; “the proceeding of and the evidence taken before any Select Committee and any documents presented to and decisions of such a Committee shall not be published by any member thereof or by any other person before the Committee has presented its report to the Assembly.”
During the discussions that followed on what had transpired it was suggested that he be summoned before the committee to address the issue before the disciplinary committee of the National Assembly for action to be taken.

The article causing the furore had stated that Ramjattan stormed out of the session given that the opposition was not satisfied with the role of the Economic Services Committee as it relates to the monitoring of the developments of Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO) Guyana and.
The AFC chairman explained that the Committee had agreed to invite Commissioner of Insurance/Judicial Manager Maria van Beek to a special meeting.

However, because of the recent attempt on her life, which has made her indisposed, Ramjattan argued that other officials should be called to answer certain pertinent questions, which members may have.
“This is the function of this important Committee…Our monitoring duty is not to read in the newspapers what are the developments and report such newspaper stories to the National Assembly”, he told Kaieteur News, pointing out that the latter is what it appears the Committee wants.

Ramjattan opined that a key stumbling block is the narrow and conservative attitude of Chairman of the Committee, Presidential advisor Gail Teixeira and the other PPP/C members to a lesser extent. He believes that her interpretation as it relates to monitoring was too narrow, in that she is of the opinion that monitoring meant just observing.
According to Ramjattan, the Opposition is now severely frustrated because there are so many unanswered questions and an inquiry, which could be very useful, now seems very unlikely.
Ramjattan said that the Committee was an oversight and scrutinizing body, and cautioned against conservatism.

“Gail’s conservatism will degut the Committee of this primary function”.
Ramjattan also alluded to Teixeira’s stand on the argument of sub judice which “she wants to use as a second line of defence to prevent the Committee from checking as to what happened at CLICO (Guyana)”. He explained that the sub judice principle is in place substantially for the purpose to prevent the influencing of a Judge in coming to any decision.
“If the meeting of the Economic Services Committee on this matter of monitoring of CLICO will be in camera as was decided by the Committee, how could that influence the Judge in the resolution of the issues before him?

“Parliament is a sort of a Court, too, and its processes must not be cribbed and circumscribed simply by the fact that a matter which it wants to deal with is in Court…So when we go into an extensive investigation of NIS later this year, as we are preparing to do, must we necessarily stop that investigation if Dr Roger Luncheon, arranges somebody to bring an action in the High Court against the NIS?” He said that such an approach is tantamount to an abdication of the duty of Parliamentarians and an indirect ousting of their jurisdiction as Parliamentarians.
He claimed that he walked out after realising that “this so-called monitoring exercise would be one big farce”. He accused Teixeira of a role “to ensure a big cover-up”.

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