Expelled PPP member Khemraj Ramjattan was invited on Tuesday evening by the Office of the President (OP) to a parliamentary committee meeting summoned by President Bharrat Jagdeo then told shortly after he was no longer welcome to attend.

Ramjattan and President Jagdeo have been at odds over charges by Ramjattan that the President had levelled a certain allegation against him. This and other matters subsequently led to Ramjattan's expulsion from the PPP and is believed to be behind Tuesday's flip-flop invitation.

The meeting of the Foreign Relations Sectoral Committee had been called by President Jagdeo to discuss yesterday's announcement in relation to the offshore maritime boundary with Suriname. Only PPP/C representatives attended the meeting after the opposition objected to the manner in which it was summoned.

Ramjattan, still a PPP Member of Parliament, told Stabroek News yesterday he considered the invitation fiasco "infantile conduct".

He said on Tuesday, his secretary told him that someone named Grant had telephoned his office and requested that he attend a meeting of the Foreign Relations Sectoral Committee at OP.

A call placed to the OP confirmed that Ramjattan had been invited and discussions on the border issue between Guyana and Suriname were expected to be held.

But half an hour later, Ramjattan received a telephone call from someone who identified herself as Shalini Singh informing him that the invitation had been a mistake and he was not invited to the meeting.

"I told her I'm a full voting and not an alternate member of the Foreign Relations Sectoral Committee but she said that she had been instructed by the Office of the President to tell me I was not invited," Ramjattan said.

According to Ramjattan, he placed another call to OP where the same person answered and repeated what she had said earlier on his inquiry but refused to divulge the source of her instructions.

Ramjattan said that as a member of the aforementioned committee, he had a keen interest in matters such as the Guyana/Suriname border issue.

"This is a continuation of some people's infantile conduct...I'm still a MP and a member of all parliamentary committees. I think it was real silly of [whoever made the decision to uninvite me] to do so," Ramjattan asserted.

The PNCR in a statement yesterday denounced the manner in which the meeting was called by the President. "It should be clear even to this incompetent government that a meeting of a parliamentary committee should only be properly summoned through the Clerk of the National Assembly on advice from the Speaker or the Chairperson of the Committee", the party said. It added that the President has no authority to arbitrarily summon "the members of any parliamentary sub-committee to be lectured by him".