The last sit­ting of the first ses­sion of Par­lia­ment was not with­out con­tro­ver­sy, as the Op­po­si­tion staged a walk­out from the Low­er House, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of abus­ing its par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty to si­lence Op­po­si­tion voic­es dur­ing de­bate on the Vic­tims’ Rights Bill.

In a state­ment is­sued af­ter the sit­ting, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) con­demned what it de­scribed as “yet an­oth­er at­tack on the sanc­ti­ty of the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go” and ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of un­der­min­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the PNM, the con­tro­ver­sy un­fold­ed af­ter Op­po­si­tion MP for Port-of-Spain South Kei­th Scot­land com­plet­ed his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate and MP for Laven­tille West Ka­reem Mar­celle rose to con­tin­ue speak­ing on be­half of the Op­po­si­tion.