THE House of Representatives will sit in an extraordinary session on Thursday at 10.30 am to debate a motion filed by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar for the appointment of a tribunal to investigate the removal of President Paula-Mae Weekes from office. Persad-Bissessar's motion is in relation to events that led to the collapse of the Police Service Commission (PSC) last month and the failure of a merit list of candidates for a commissioner of police (CoP) to be sent to the House for consideration.

A House Order Paper for Thursday's extraordinary sitting released by the Parliament on Monday, said the sitting will deal exclusively with a motion filed by Persad-Bissessar asking that "pursuant to section 36 of the Constitution, a tribunal be established to investigate the removal of Her Excellency Paula-Mae Weekes, ORTT from the Office of the President."

The motion states that Section 35 of the Constitution provides that the President may be removed from office under Section 36 of the Constitution where the President "willfully violates any provision of the Constitution; and/or behaves in such a way as to bring her office into hatred, ridicule or contempt and/or behaves in a way that endangers the security of the State."

The motion further claims there have been unrefuted reports of recent events at President's House of interference in the selection processes undertaken by the PSC and a list of nominees for CoP prepared by the PSC was "recently submitted to the President and she refused to notify the House of these nominees."

The motion claims the President "has neglected to publicly address those reports and has otherwise failed to faithfully execute her several duties under the Constitution."

The motion argues that Weekes should be removed from office because she "willfully violated the provisions of the Constitution securing the independence of the PSC in the performance of its functions and also willfully violated section 123 of the Constitution; behaved in such a way as to bring her office into hatred, ridicule or contempt by interfering and/or facilitating interference with the PSC and also by proceeding in the circumstances to appoint new members of the PSC; behaved in a way that has resulted in the endangerment of the security of the State through her inactions and/failure and/or neglect to act and has otherwise failed and/or neglected to execute her duties under the Constitution."

In announcing her intention last week to file this motion against Weekes, Persad-Bissessar said the motion was signed by all 19 Opposition MPs in the House. This is in keeping with the requirement of Section 36 (1) (a) and (b) of the Constitution, with (b) saying the motion must be signed by at least one third of the House's membership (which is 14 MPs).

But Section 36 (1) (c) states the motion must be adopted by "the vote of not less than two-thirds of the total membership of the Senate and the House of Representatives assembled together." The members of the House and Senate form the Electoral College