Mark’s vote breaks 15-15 Senate deadlock to pass Special Operations Bill

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark used his cast­ing vote ear­ly this morn­ing to break a 15-15 dead­lock and se­cure pas­sage of the Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, fol­low­ing a tense con­clu­sion to de­bate in the Up­per House.

The bill re­ceived the sup­port of all 15 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors but was re­ject­ed by all six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors and the nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, leav­ing the cham­ber even­ly di­vid­ed.

With the vote tied, Mark in­ter­vened, say­ing he had re­searched his au­thor­i­ty to ex­er­cise a cast­ing vote and was sat­is­fied he could break the dead­lock.

“There is no set­tled prac­tice in this Par­lia­ment based on my re­search on this is­sue of the sta­tus quo re cast­ing vote,” Mark told sen­a­tors.

“I have done the re­search on this mat­ter. I will make it avail­able at the ap­pro­pri­ate time to my col­leagues who have re­quest­ed it. I vote with the ayes, 16.”

Mark, who to­day will re­ceive the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, then de­clared the fi­nal vote 16 in favour and 15 against, al­low­ing the bill to pass.

The de­c­la­ra­tion prompt­ed im­me­di­ate ob­jec­tions from the Op­po­si­tion bench­es, with Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi re­peat­ed­ly at­tempt­ing to raise a Stand­ing Or­der.

Mark, how­ev­er, ruled that the vote had al­ready been tak­en and de­clined to en­ter­tain fur­ther dis­cus­sion.

“The vote has been tak­en. The bill has been passed,” he said, be­fore in­struct­ing the Clerk to pro­ceed with the read­ing of the bill’s long ti­tle.

When ob­jec­tions con­tin­ued, Mark told the sen­a­tor to take his seat, re­peat­ing the in­struc­tion three times.

The dra­mat­ic vote came af­ter Gov­ern­ment re­ject­ed amend­ments pro­posed by In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage of the leg­is­la­tion.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira pro­posed, among oth­er changes, that the term “spe­cial op­er­a­tions” be ex­press­ly de­fined in the leg­is­la­tion.

Vieira al­so raised con­cerns about the Prime Min­is­ter’s role in the ap­point­ment of Heads of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions with­in the coun­try’s polic­ing dis­tricts, ar­gu­ing against the Prime Min­is­ter hav­ing the abil­i­ty to ve­to a per­son se­lect­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Gov­ern­ment did not ac­cept the pro­posed amend­ments.

Dur­ing de­bate, In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors had raised broad­er con­cerns about safe­guards con­tained in the leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion of closed ar­eas, re­stric­tions on move­ment, de­ten­tion pow­ers and over­sight of spe­cial op­er­a­tions.

The Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill re­quired on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage, un­like the Gov­ern­ment’s ear­li­er Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion, which re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty and failed in the Sen­ate ear­li­er this year.

The re­vised bill had al­ready been passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives fol­low­ing de­bate last Fri­day.

Thurs­day morn­ing’s vote means the leg­is­la­tion has now cleared both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment.