Young: President must demand details on alleged vote-trading

Akash Sama­roo

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has called on Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo to im­me­di­ate­ly seek for­mal clar­i­fi­ca­tion from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar over al­le­ga­tions that two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors at­tempt­ed to trade their votes for per­son­al favours dur­ing de­bate on the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill.

In a state­ment, Young said the Pres­i­dent is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly em­pow­ered and oblig­ed to re­quest full de­tails of the al­le­ga­tions un­der sec­tion 81 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which re­quires the Prime Min­is­ter to keep the Pres­i­dent ful­ly in­formed on mat­ters re­lat­ing to the con­duct of gov­ern­ment.

“The Pres­i­dent, if she has not al­ready done so, must im­me­di­ate­ly write the Prime Min­is­ter pur­suant to sec­tion 81 of the Con­sti­tu­tion re­quest­ing the in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the al­le­ga­tions,” Young said, not­ing that In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors serve at the Pres­i­dent’s plea­sure un­der sec­tion 40(2)(c).

Young ar­gued that the Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready in­formed the pub­lic that she pos­sess­es ev­i­dence of al­leged crim­i­nal con­duct in­volv­ing three sen­a­tors, two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and one Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor, all ap­point­ed un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

He said any such in­for­ma­tion must be pro­vid­ed to the Pres­i­dent with­out de­lay, stress­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter, as a Se­nior Coun­sel sworn to up­hold the Con­sti­tu­tion, has a du­ty to act in ac­cor­dance with its pro­vi­sions.

“The Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go is the supreme law and takes prece­dence over every oth­er law,” Young stat­ed.

He fur­ther warned that al­le­ga­tions of “horse-trad­ing” or in­duce­ments in ex­change for leg­isla­tive sup­port are il­le­gal and are erod­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in Par­lia­ment.

“This mat­ter can­not be al­lowed to sim­ply rest,” Young said, adding that any fail­ure to fol­low the con­sti­tu­tion­al process would it­self amount to a breach of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter has so far de­clined to pub­licly iden­ti­fy the sen­a­tors al­leged­ly in­volved or to de­tail the ev­i­dence she claims to pos­sess.