Maharaj acts as AG as ZOSOs debate continues

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj is cur­rent­ly serv­ing as act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, with John Je­re­mie out of the coun­try on what is said to be of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment busi­ness.

Je­re­mie’s ab­sence was dis­closed on Wednes­day by the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent when de­bate re­sumed in the Up­per House on the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) Bill.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that, be­cause he was not present to wind up the de­bate, it was one of the rea­sons why the sit­ting was ad­journed to to­day.

No of­fi­cial state­ment was is­sued by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al an­nounc­ing his de­par­ture from the coun­try or in­di­cat­ing who would act in his place.

Je­re­mie pi­lot­ed the ZOSO bill late Tues­day evening.

Spe­cial fo­cus will be placed on how the vot­ing process for the bill goes, as the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage. This means the Gov­ern­ment needs at least four votes from the nine-mem­ber in­de­pen­dent bench. How­ev­er, af­ter three speak­ers (Je­re­mie, Faris Al-Rawi, and Josh Dray­ton), the sit­ting was ad­journed and set to re­sume on Wednes­day. Be­fore 6 pm on Wednes­day, the sit­ting was again ad­journed un­til to­day, with the bill still not go­ing to a vote.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate Leader Dar­rell Al­la­har to in­quire whether yes­ter­day’s de­bate was ad­journed due to the ab­sence of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, who would or­di­nar­i­ly be ex­pect­ed to wind up the de­bate and re­spond to con­cerns raised by op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors. Sen­a­tor Al­la­har did not re­spond to the query.

But In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira said while Je­re­mie’s ab­sence may have been one of the rea­sons the de­bate was ad­journed, oth­er fac­tors played a role.

“There are still a num­ber of sen­a­tors on the gov­ern­ment, op­po­si­tion and in­de­pen­dent bench­es who still have to con­tribute, af­ter which we go to the com­mit­tee stage,” the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor said.

“On a bill of this na­ture, it is on­ly prop­er that the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al should be present to weigh and de­cide on pro­posed amend­ments. I can al­so say that every­one was bone tired af­ter the marathon ses­sion on Tues­day; an­oth­er late night on Wednes­day would have been just too much. We were all glad for the lit­tle break.”

Mean­while, Act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al De­vesh Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia he ex­pects At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Je­re­mie to re­turn to­day. Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath, mean­while, said Je­re­mie re­sumes du­ties on Sun­day.

How­ev­er, sources in­di­cate the de­bate on the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion may not con­clude to­day and could in­stead be wrapped up next Tues­day.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne told Guardian Me­dia that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment was pre­pared to de­bate the bill to its con­clu­sion on Tues­day night.

“All sen­a­tors came pre­pared to de­bate through the night and to fin­ish those de­bates. Clear­ly, the Gov­ern­ment has changed their ini­tial in­ten­tion, has var­ied their ini­tial in­ten­tion, and we are pre­pared to re­spond and to par­tic­i­pate in this de­bate, which we see as very im­por­tant to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Asked if he be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment may have in­ten­tion­al­ly spread the de­bate over some days to give con­sid­er­a­tion to the rec­om­men­da­tions pro­posed by the op­po­si­tion and in­de­pen­dent bench­es, Dr Browne said, “I don’t know, but what I can say is that a wide range of ques­tions, queries, and crit­i­cisms have been pre­sent­ed to the Gov­ern­ment thus far. We still have one or maybe two days of de­bate to come, and so they have quite a task ahead of them.”

At­tempts to con­tact Je­re­mie yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.