PUT UP OR SHUT UP.
That’s what Minister of Economic Affairs Dr David Estwick is demanding of Opposition parliamentarian and former Attorney-General Dale Marshall, if he is to prove his allegation that the Cabinet minister pulled a gun on him during a verbal altercation in the precincts of Parliament.
In New York where he participated in an investment seminar on insurance sponsored by Invest Barbados, Estwick told WEEKEND NATION:
“The fact of the matter is that it has gone too far. He [Marshall] is going to do two things and my good friend Owen Arthur [former Prime Minister]. You either bring the evidence, shut up or you are going to be deal with it in the large courts.
“It is as simple as that. Because my good friend, the former Prime Minister was in St Lucia [when the incident allegedly occurred].
“He doesn’t know what’s going on. But I heard him [Arthur] on the platform [saying] my behaviour was an abomination to the parliament and a lot of things. I am stopping all of that.
“You either bring the evidence or shut up and as a result of that, the matter will be dealt with in the appropriate legal way and you can rest assured that process might already have been started while I am here in New York and that’s all I will have to say on that matter.”
Estwick said he would ask Barbadians to remember one thing: “If your Parliament is the highest court in the land, then by extension the Speaker of the House acts as a High Court judge.
“There is a procedure that is akin to what happens in a normal court; you have an allegation so you come and you lay a case. You lay the case before the judge. The judge, in this case, the Speaker, will determine after investigations carried out, whether what you are saying is true or not and therefore no further action is required.”
Estwick said he was sick and tired of the untrue allegations being made against him and insisted that Marshall, the representative for St Joseph in the House of Assembly, present his case in the appropriate parliamentary forum.
Failing that, he said, he might be forced to do it in the law courts.
