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Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les has warned that democ­ra­cy in T&T is un­der threat, af­ter House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh blocked the op­po­si­tion from ask­ing sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions dur­ing Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tion Time (PMQT) on Fri­day, cit­ing that the Stand­ing Or­ders do not pro­vide for such ques­tions.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion in Port-of-Spain, Gon­za­les said PMQT, in­tro­duced in­to the Stand­ing Or­ders in June 2015, had tra­di­tion­al­ly al­lowed sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions un­der for­mer Speak­ers Wade Mark and Bridgid An­nisette-George for the past 15 years. He said the op­po­si­tion sub­mits ques­tions to the Speak­er, who ap­proves or dis­ap­proves them at his dis­cre­tion.

“Last week, the op­po­si­tion was de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask sup­ple­men­tary ques­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter,” Gon­za­les said. “We were tak­en by sur­prise be­cause the an­swers pro­vid­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter war­rant­ed fur­ther scruti­ny by the elect­ed op­po­si­tion.”