5 days and counting

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Five days af­ter Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has yet to in­di­cate whether she will ac­cept it, while the Gov­ern­ment re­mains silent on how it will re­spond if John-Bates or Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi ap­pear in the Up­per House, start­ing to­day.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les of­fered a brief re­sponse: “I will let you know AS­AP.”

On the Gov­ern­ment’s next move, Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Sen­ate, Dar­rel Al­la­har, de­clined to be drawn in­to the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing John-Bates, re­ply­ing on­ly, “No Com­ment.”

And a for­mer Sen­ate pres­i­dent is rec­om­mend­ing that par­lia­men­tary op­er­a­tional guide­lines be re­vis­it­ed to en­sure there is no re­peat of what is now de­vel­op­ing in­to a Sen­ate stale­mate.

The im­passe comes as ten­sions rise with­in par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings.

Dur­ing Fri­day’s de­bate on a mo­tion to adopt the re­port of the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) on the con­duct of John-Bates, Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Jear­lean John sig­nalled a hard­line stance against en­gag­ing with the two sen­a­tors in com­mit­tee set­tings.

“I am be­yond an­noyed to sit with Sen­a­tor John-Bates and Al-Rawi. As a mat­ter of fact, I am go­ing to do just what they did in the com­mit­tee for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the joint se­lect. Be­cause Sen­a­tor Al-Rawi is on the en­er­gy com­mit­tee. And should he show up, we gonna show him the door. He got­ta go, he has to go. We’re not go­ing to sit with him. Be­cause that is the broth­er­hood of wrong­do­ers,” she told the Low­er House.

De­spite the po­lit­i­cal fall­out, the Sen­ate is to­day set to con­tin­ue its leg­isla­tive agen­da, in­clud­ing de­bate on the Vic­tims’ Rights Bill, 2026, and the re­sump­tion of a mo­tion call­ing for a com­pre­hen­sive Na­tion­al Work­force and Man­pow­er Strate­gic Plan with­in 12 months.

Some in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors yes­ter­day said the work should pro­ceed, not­ing that both John-Bates and Al-Rawi have al­ready been re­ferred to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee.

“I have my role as an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor. I can­not be seen to be protest­ing any oth­er sen­a­tor’s pres­ence. As far as I am aware, the Sen­ate vot­ed to have the two sen­a­tors sent to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee. Un­til the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee in­ves­ti­gates and makes a de­ter­mi­na­tion of mis­con­duct, they should be sit­ting,” In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc­Nish told Guardian Me­dia.

An­oth­er In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, Fran­cis Lewis, shared a sim­i­lar view.

“I have no plans. They are ful­ly ap­point­ed. Whether I am there or any­body else is there, there is busi­ness to be dealt with,” Lewis said.

Re­spond­ing to how Gov­ern­ment would treat with the con­tin­ued pres­ence of John-Bates and Al-Rawi in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter in the Hous­ing Min­istry, Phillip Alexan­der, said: “We’ll be guid­ed by the ac­tions of Gov­ern­ment’s Sen­ate leader and the AG.”

Ac­cord­ing to Par­lia­ment’s web­site, the Sen­ate’s Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee is head­ed by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Mark and in­cludes Al-Rawi (who is the Op­po­si­tion’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive), At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, UNC Sen­a­tor Dar­rell Al­la­har (an at­tor­ney) and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Michael De La Bastide.

The Par­lia­ment’s seg­ment on Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee meet­ings stat­ed yes­ter­day that there were no “meet­ings avail­able.”

Mean­while, for­mer Sen­ate pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith is call­ing for clear­er par­lia­men­tary rules, ar­gu­ing that the con­tro­ver­sy ex­pos­es gaps in guid­ance around the PAAC’s con­duct.

“You can is­sue guide­lines which say if you sit on a com­mit­tee, you can’t be meet­ing with the wit­ness­es in pri­vate, as it were. I don’t think that it would be ac­cept­able by any­body to think that a mem­ber who is re­view­ing the con­duct of a per­son be­ing called up­on to ap­pear be­fore the com­mit­tee should have a pri­vate meet­ing with the per­son. That of­fends all sorts of rules,” Hamel-Smith said.

“If peo­ple didn’t re­alise it, then per­haps there’s a good rea­son why you would want to is­sue guide­lines so that in fu­ture, peo­ple know where the bound­aries are.”

Hamel-Smith al­so warned that any Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee in­ves­ti­ga­tion could stretch be­yond a sin­gle par­lia­men­tary term, de­lay­ing a fi­nal rul­ing.

The con­tro­ver­sy cen­tres on John-Bates and Al-Rawi’s role in edit­ing a wit­ness state­ment by for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, which was lat­er sub­mit­ted to the PAAC. Their in­volve­ment was dis­cov­ered af­ter track changes re­mained en­abled on the doc­u­ment.

Deyals­ingh is a wit­ness in the PAAC’s in­quiry in­to the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor.

John-Bates re­signed on Fri­day, ac­cept­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for her role while deny­ing wrong­do­ing or any at­tempt to com­mit con­tempt of Par­lia­ment.

John-Bates has been re­placed by PNM sen­a­tor Vish­nu Dhan­paul on the PAAC and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee.

Al-Rawi was ex­pect­ed to sub­mit a re­port to the Op­po­si­tion Leader on the mat­ter. He, how­ev­er, has not re­signed.

On Fri­day night, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took to Face­book, de­scrib­ing Al-Rawi as “un­touch­able” and al­leg­ing he is shield­ed by the PNM’s “fake elite fi­nanciers” who, she claimed, have con­trolled the par­ty since 2010.

Ear­li­er that day, dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary de­bate, Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters Sad­dam Ho­sein, Jear­lean John and Bar­ry Padarath ac­cused Beck­les of weak­ness for not im­me­di­ate­ly ac­cept­ing John-Bates’ res­ig­na­tion and of fail­ing to act de­ci­sive­ly against Al-Rawi, with Ho­sein sug­gest­ing she was “afraid” of the se­nior coun­sel.

But for­mer PNM vice chair­man Robert Le Hunte yes­ter­day pushed back at these sug­ges­tions, ar­gu­ing that the is­sue is be­ing over­stat­ed and po­lit­i­cal­ly lever­aged.

“It is clear that the coun­try holds the PNM to a dif­fer­ent stan­dard than they hold any­one else...This is not an is­sue as it re­lates to los­ing 50,000 jobs. This is not caus­ing any loss of in­come, and there are a lot more se­ri­ous is­sues fac­ing this coun­try with re­gard to un­em­ploy­ment, with re­gard to a lot of bro­ken promis­es that the UNC would have made,” Le Hunte said.

“I agree this is an im­por­tant is­sue, but it is up to the Gov­ern­ment to use this as a di­ver­sion tac­tic as best as they can so that peo­ple will not fo­cus on the oth­er is­sues.”

Le Hunte al­so dis­missed sug­ges­tions of in­ter­nal in­sta­bil­i­ty, in­sist­ing Beck­les re­tains strong back­ing with­in the par­ty.

“The PNM has a po­lit­i­cal leader, in which I would say the ma­jor­i­ty, and I say not on­ly a small ma­jor­i­ty, over 90 per cent of the peo­ple are very sat­is­fied with her. And there­fore, the PNM is al­so fo­cused on do­ing the work to try to re­pair work done by oth­ers in the past that caused close to one-third of the mem­ber­ship of the PNM to move away,” he said.

“That’s a Her­culean task and, there­fore, there is no con­fu­sion with­in the PNM of who is our po­lit­i­cal leader and who is the per­son that is fit to lead the PNM at this point in time.”

Al-Rawi has de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter, cit­ing his role as le­gal coun­sel for Deyals­ingh.

—With re­port­ing by Gail Alexan­der