PNM challenges Kamla to name independents over ZOSO vote claims

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Name them if it’s true!

That chal­lenge was im­me­di­ate­ly thrown out to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar by Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors and MPs past and present yes­ter­day, af­ter her claim that two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors “asked” for “per­son­al favours” on Tues­day in ex­change for sup­port of Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Zones bill

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the al­le­ga­tion in an X post yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the de­feat of bill in the Sen­ate on Tues­day. The bill failed due to lack of sup­port from in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) had made its op­po­si­tion to the bill known in ad­vance.

The bill re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage. Gov­ern­ment need­ed four more votes for its pas­sage. All six PNM sen­a­tors vot­ed against it, as did eight of the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. One ab­stained.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­leged yes­ter­day that two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ap­proached a se­nior Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor seek­ing “per­son­al favours in ex­change for sup­port and for se­cur­ing the re­main­ing votes need­ed for pas­sage.” She said the re­quests were re­ject­ed but didn’t iden­ti­fy the in­di­vid­u­als or give any ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate her al­le­ga­tions. She al­so did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s query on who the sen­a­tors were.

Com­ment­ing on the claims, Op­po­si­tion PNM whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les said, “The Prime Min­is­ter has a du­ty to name the two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors who al­leged­ly ap­proached her min­is­ters re­quest­ing favours if she re­al­ly stands by the TRUTH­FUL­NESS of this al­le­ga­tion.

“If she’s not pre­pared to do so, then she is, in fact, ques­tion­ing the in­tegri­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of her own min­is­ters who brought that in­for­ma­tion to her, or it’s an out­right and ma­li­cious LIE meant to de­stroy the in­tegri­ty of the sen­a­tors that right­ly sent her zones bill to­geth­er in­to the trash can.”

Op­po­si­tion Sen­ate leader Dr Amery Browne added, “It would be quite im­pos­si­ble for the Prime Min­is­ter to have han­dled this failed bill any worse than she’s done. Dai­ly, she had low­ered the lev­el of her dis­course to a de­gree that would sur­prise any sane in­di­vid­ual.

“Her first fail­ure was in­sult­ing sen­a­tors left, right and cen­tre, be­fore de­bate. That’s not how any ra­tio­nal and sen­si­ble par­lia­men­tar­i­an ap­proach­es spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty leg­is­la­tion. She then de­scend­ed in­to name-call­ing, ad­di­tion­al in­vec­tive and in­spired her Sen­ate team to en­gage in sim­i­lar fash­ion ...”

Browne added, “She then in­struct­ed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to ac­cept no amend­ments, ef­fec­tive­ly scut­tling any chance at suc­cess. Now the lat­est chap­ter in this ab­ject mad­ness is the Prime Min­is­ter lev­el­ling what amounts to an ac­cu­sa­tion of crim­i­nal con­duct against two un­named in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

“If the events that the Prime Min­is­ter has now con­jured had in­deed oc­curred, the re­spon­si­ble course of ac­tion would have been to im­me­di­ate­ly re­port it to the TTPS and have the AG or an­oth­er min­is­ter alert the Par­lia­ment on the Hansard record.

“The Prime Min­is­ter now has no choice but to present spe­cif­ic de­tails and ev­i­dence to sup­port her ac­cu­sa­tions. If she choos­es to keep this in the realm of mere in­nu­en­do and spec­u­la­tion with as­per­sions against the en­tire in­de­pen­dent bench, it tells this na­tion and the world that all she’s do­ing is cov­er­ing her shame­ful mis­cal­cu­la­tions with the low­est lev­el of dis­trac­tion, de­flec­tion and mis­con­duct on her part.”

PM has no op­tions - Bood­hu

Tem­po­rary PNM Sen­a­tor and deputy par­ty leader San­jiv Bood­hu said Per­sad- Bisses­sar’s claim was “most egre­gious.”

“The PM must dis­close the par­tic­u­lars of this al­le­ga­tion and ALL par­ties in­volved; fail­ing which, cit­i­zens will have no choice but to con­clude that the PM will stop at noth­ing, and will ob­serve no bound­aries, in her pur­suit of ul­ti­mate, un­fet­tered and un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ex­ec­u­tive pow­er over the peo­ple,” Bood­hu said.

“This al­le­ga­tion, made in­ter­est­ing­ly via a Face­book rant, if left un­ex­am­ined and un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed, has the po­ten­tial to dis­cred­it a num­ber of per­sons in pub­lic of­fice ... But the Prime Min­is­ter has no op­tions here. She must im­me­di­ate­ly re­port this mat­ter to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent and TTPS.

“If she does noth­ing more than make this a so­cial me­dia plat­form is­sue, it brings the PM her­self in­to odi­um, along with the en­tire Gov­ern­ment bench. It must be dealt with re­spon­si­bly and im­me­di­ate­ly if the peo­ple are to have any con­fi­dence at all in the fit­ness of the Prime Min­is­ter for the of­fice she holds.”

Query­ing if the al­le­ga­tion would have arisen if the In­de­pen­dents had sup­port­ed the bill, Bood­hu said the tim­ing of the al­le­ga­tion was cu­ri­ous.”

Was the Prime Min­is­ter on­ly told (Wednes­day) of the al­leged mat­ter? If not, what caused this sud­den, in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly chan­nelled out­burst? Why was this al­le­ga­tion not suf­fi­cient to cause the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly re­port it to the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent and stop de­bate?

“Did Gov­ern­ment re­frain from re­port­ing it, hop­ing the in­de­pen­dents would have sup­port­ed the bill? If sup­port was forth­com­ing, would the pub­lic have ever been told of this al­leged act? The more one ex­am­ines the al­le­ga­tion, the less be­liev­able it is.”

For­mer PNM MP Ran­dall Mitchell said, “This is a clever way to de­fame and scan­dalise these in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors - to stink up their name and rep­u­ta­tion for in­de­pen­dence and im­par­tial­i­ty for the en­tire coun­try to see.”

“In the law of defama­tion, the gen­er­al rule is you can­not de­fame an en­tire group. But this group is small and iden­ti­fi­able,” Mitchell added, not­ing he’d love to see mem­bers bring a suit.