‘SATANIC SENATORS!’

Sto­ries by Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­demned the nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors who vot­ed against the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, de­scrib­ing them as “sa­tan­ic” and de­clar­ing that her Gov­ern­ment will no longer ac­cept amend­ments from the In­de­pen­dent bench on any leg­is­la­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the re­marks in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia af­ter the bill’s nar­row pas­sage in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day morn­ing, where a 15-15 dead­lock was bro­ken by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s cast­ing vote.

All 15 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors sup­port­ed the leg­is­la­tion, while the six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors and nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.

Asked for her re­ac­tion to the In­de­pen­dent bench’s unan­i­mous re­jec­tion of the bill, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the sen­a­tors of sid­ing with crim­i­nals.

“That was ex­pect­ed from that group of scum­bags,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

“They vot­ed against help­ing dy­ing chil­dren with the ex­pand­ed Chil­dren’s Life Fund Bill, so no one ex­pect­ed bet­ter from them.”

She in­ten­si­fied her crit­i­cism, call­ing the sen­a­tors “sa­tan­ic” for op­pos­ing the crime-fight­ing leg­is­la­tion.

“They are sa­tan­ic to vote to pro­tect drug traf­fick­ers who poi­son our chil­dren, to pro­tect rapists who rape moth­ers and daugh­ters in their beds, to pro­tect vi­o­lent crim­i­nals who rob and beat our el­der­ly,” she said.

“Those demons ba­si­cal­ly told the crim­i­nals to go rape, rob and mur­der with their vote.”

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so dis­missed amend­ments pro­posed by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage and in­di­cat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment would take a tougher stance to­ward the In­de­pen­dent bench in fu­ture.

“If they want to write leg­is­la­tion, they should fight elec­tions to earn a seat in Par­lia­ment. Go­ing for­ward, we will not take a sin­gle amend­ment from that bench on any bill,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors pro­posed sev­er­al amend­ments, none of which were ac­cept­ed by Gov­ern­ment.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira sought a de­f­i­n­i­tion of the term “spe­cial op­er­a­tions” and raised con­cerns about the Prime Min­is­ter’s role in ap­point­ing Heads of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions.

The amend­ments fol­lowed con­cerns ex­pressed by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors through­out the de­bate re­gard­ing safe­guards, over­sight mech­a­nisms and the scope of pow­ers grant­ed un­der the leg­is­la­tion.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Michael de la Bastide said he could not sup­port the bill be­cause it placed what he viewed as state of emer­gency-type pow­ers in the hands of the Ex­ec­u­tive with­out suf­fi­cient ju­di­cial over­sight.

He al­so raised con­cerns about the po­ten­tial for po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence in the use of the leg­is­la­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­di­cat­ed that spe­cial op­er­a­tions would be per­mit­ted in Gov­ern­ment-con­trolled con­stituen­cies and lo­cal gov­ern­ment dis­tricts, as well as To­ba­go, but not in Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled ar­eas whose rep­re­sen­ta­tives op­posed them.

Vieira, while ac­knowl­edg­ing im­prove­ments over the Gov­ern­ment’s failed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill, iden­ti­fied sev­er­al out­stand­ing con­cerns.

These in­clud­ed the ab­sence of max­i­mum time lim­its for closed ar­eas and cur­fews, pro­vi­sions re­lat­ing to de­ten­tion with­out charge and what he con­sid­ered in­ad­e­quate par­lia­men­tary over­sight of spe­cial op­er­a­tions.

He al­so ques­tioned why a writ­ten rec­om­men­da­tion from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was not re­quired be­fore a closed area could be de­clared and called for quar­ter­ly re­ports to Par­lia­ment on the use of the leg­is­la­tion.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr De­siree Mur­ray raised con­cerns about the ab­sence of a manda­to­ry re­quire­ment for po­lice of­fi­cers to wear body cam­eras dur­ing spe­cial op­er­a­tions.

The bill in­stead pro­vides for the use of record­ing de­vices “where prac­ti­ca­ble” and in ac­cor­dance with di­rec­tions is­sued by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Mur­ray al­so ques­tioned the re­moval of the so­cial and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment com­po­nent con­tained in the pre­vi­ous ZOSO leg­is­la­tion and ex­pressed con­cerns about the ab­sence of a con­sti­tu­tion­al over­ride clause.

De­spite those ob­jec­tions, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Sen­ate vote demon­strat­ed that the In­de­pen­dent bench ul­ti­mate­ly could not pre­vent the Gov­ern­ment from pass­ing the bill.

“They were rel­e­gat­ed to use­less­ness in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, to on­ly bray and then have no ef­fect on the leg­is­la­tion,” she said.

“That will be their role go­ing for­ward, to bray and be ig­nored. My Gov­ern­ment will not buy votes from any­one.”

The Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill re­quired on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty to pass.

The leg­is­la­tion di­vides Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to sev­en polic­ing dis­tricts and es­tab­lish­es a frame­work for spe­cial op­er­a­tions with­in those dis­tricts. It al­so al­lows for the de­c­la­ra­tion of “closed ar­eas”, where en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, in­clud­ing cur­fews, check­points, cor­dons, en­try and ex­it con­trols and cer­tain search pow­ers, may be im­ple­ment­ed.

The Gov­ern­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly at­tempt­ed to in­tro­duce Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion, but that bill failed in the Sen­ate in Jan­u­ary af­ter it did not se­cure the three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty re­quired for pas­sage.

Eight In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and all six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors vot­ed against that mea­sure, while one In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor ab­stained.

The Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill was sub­se­quent­ly re­draft­ed to re­quire on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty. It passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week be­fore reach­ing the Sen­ate, where yes­ter­day morn­ing’s vote end­ed in a 15-15 tie.

Mark ul­ti­mate­ly ex­er­cised his cast­ing vote in favour of the leg­is­la­tion, en­sur­ing its pas­sage.

Asked for her over­all as­sess­ment of the out­come, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was pleased with the re­sult.

“The vote went well. The Gov­ern­ment vot­ed for the bill and Sa­tan’s helpers vot­ed against it,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had al­so crit­i­cised the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors for their lack of sup­port for the ZOSO Bill in Jan­u­ary. At the time, she la­belled them as “nine bootlick­ers” and al­leged that two of them had sought per­son­al favours in ex­change for sup­port of the bill, al­though she has nev­er named them.