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House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh yes­ter­day ruled that at­tempts by the Op­po­si­tion to re­fer Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath to the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges do not meet the re­quired thresh­old, ef­fec­tive­ly block­ing the move a sec­ond time.

The rul­ing fol­lows two let­ters sub­mit­ted last week by Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les. One let­ter chal­lenged state­ments made by the Prime Min­is­ter al­leg­ing that two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors ap­proached a se­nior Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor seek­ing to trade their sup­port for the now-de­feat­ed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill in ex­change for per­son­al favours. The sec­ond let­ter ad­dressed com­ments by Padarath, ac­cus­ing in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors of sid­ing with crim­i­nals over cit­i­zens by fail­ing to sup­port the bill.

In the let­ter con­cern­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks, Gon­za­les de­scribed the al­le­ga­tions as “se­ri­ous, reck­less and un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed.” He ar­gued that the state­ments amount­ed to grave ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and mis­con­duct against mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, in­clud­ing In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, with­out par­tic­u­lars ca­pa­ble of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, in­ves­ti­ga­tion or re­sponse.