Mark mum on casting deciding vote for Special Ops Bill

Kay­marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

kay­marie.fletch­[email protected]

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark is re­fus­ing to pub­licly elab­o­rate on his de­ci­sion to cast the de­cid­ing vote in favour of the Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill yes­ter­day, in­sist­ing his rea­son­ing be­longs on the par­lia­men­tary record rather than in pub­lic de­bate.

Mark used his cast­ing vote in the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day to break a 15-15 dead­lock and se­cure pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion, which has now cleared both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment. The of­fi­cial par­lia­men­tary record shows the bill passed its third read­ing by 16 votes to 15, with no ab­sten­tions.

Speak­ing last night af­ter re­ceiv­ing the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go at the Na­tion­al Awards cer­e­mo­ny at Queen’s Hall, Mark re­peat­ed­ly re­ferred ques­tions about his de­ci­sion to the Hansard, say­ing he did not want to com­pro­mise the of­fice of Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate.

“What I would say is sim­ply this: what­ev­er de­ci­sion tak­en by my­self, I have placed it in the par­lia­men­tary record,” Mark said.

“I do not be­lieve it’s prop­er for me, as a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, to en­gage in a pub­lic kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion on what may have hap­pened in the Par­lia­ment this morn­ing.”

Mark said his po­si­tion re­quired him to avoid pub­lic dis­cus­sion of Sen­ate pro­ceed­ings.

“It is not my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and it’s not my style, to en­gage in what I call mat­ters of the Par­lia­ment, giv­en my role as Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate. That is a very im­por­tant role and I don’t want to do any­thing to com­pro­mise the of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.”

He added that any ex­pla­na­tion for his de­ci­sion was al­ready con­tained in Hansard and would, in due course, be made avail­able to sen­a­tors who had re­quest­ed it.

His com­ments came hours af­ter he told the Sen­ate that his re­search had found no set­tled par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion re­quir­ing a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer to vote to pre­serve the sta­tus quo when ex­er­cis­ing a cast­ing vote.

“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 be­fore sid­ing with the Gov­ern­ment.

“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.”

The bill sub­se­quent­ly passed 16-15 af­ter all 15 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors vot­ed in favour, while the six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors and nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.

Mark’s in­ter­ven­tion fol­lowed hours of de­bate on leg­is­la­tion es­tab­lish­ing a frame­work for spe­cial op­er­a­tions in des­ig­nat­ed ar­eas, in­clud­ing pro­vi­sions deal­ing with re­stric­tions on move­ment, closed ar­eas, de­ten­tion and over­sight. In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors sought a se­ries of amend­ments aimed at strength­en­ing safe­guards in the bill, but those pro­pos­als were re­ject­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

The fi­nal vote came af­ter Mark had re­port­ed­ly ex­er­cised a cast­ing vote dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage as well.

The Op­po­si­tion has since crit­i­cised the de­ci­sion, with Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ques­tion­ing whether the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent act­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in cast­ing the de­cid­ing vote.

Mark, how­ev­er, main­tained the is­sue should be as­sessed through the of­fi­cial par­lia­men­tary record.

Pressed on whether he would dis­close the re­search and ad­vice con­sid­ered be­fore mak­ing his de­ci­sion, Mark said, “As I said, in due course, I will make it avail­able to my col­leagues here be­cause it’s in the Hansard, it is in the records.”

He again stressed that no es­tab­lished par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion gov­erned the ex­er­cise of a cast­ing vote.

“As I said, if you go to it, I may sim­ply say that the is­sue of the cast­ing vote and the sta­tus quo have not been set­tled. It is not a set­tled prac­tice,” Mark said.

“That is why I placed it on record.”

Mark said it was im­por­tant for a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer to ex­plain the ba­sis on which a cast­ing vote was ex­er­cised when con­front­ed with a tied re­sult.

Draw­ing a dis­tinc­tion be­tween his po­lit­i­cal and par­lia­men­tary roles, he said: “I al­ways tell jour­nal­ists, the Speak­er, when I was Speak­er, does not speak. And the Pres­i­dent al­so does not speak.

“Not be­cause I don’t want to speak, but be­cause the of­fice I hold is a se­cret of­fice and I have to re­spect that of­fice.”

He added that, hav­ing been elect­ed by Par­lia­ment to pre­side over the Sen­ate, his pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to the in­sti­tu­tion it­self.

“I’m re­spon­si­ble to the Par­lia­ment,” he said.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so de­fend­ed Mark’s de­ci­sion, ar­gu­ing there is no es­tab­lished con­ven­tion re­quir­ing a Sen­ate Pres­i­dent to vote in favour of pre­serv­ing the sta­tus quo.

Ad­dress­ing the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors’ non-sup­port of the bill, she said, “It is very clear they don’t have that in­ter­est of the coun­try. They were not elect­ed by any­one, and we are the elect­ed gov­ern­ment. We were giv­en a man­date to gov­ern the coun­try.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her years in Par­lia­ment had brought her to the re­al­i­sa­tion that the cast­ing vote was a mat­ter of dis­cre­tion.

“There is no set­tled prac­tice when it comes to a cast­ing vote,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

“The Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate will ex­er­cise his dis­cre­tion. He could go left, he could go right, or he could just ab­stain. So he (Mark) has done what is in the law and in the prac­tice.”

The Gov­ern­ment’s re­vised Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill re­quired on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty in the Sen­ate, un­like the ear­li­er Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion, which re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty.

With Thurs­day’s 16-15 vote, it has now cleared both cham­bers of Par­lia­ment and moves to the next stage of the leg­isla­tive process be­fore im­ple­men­ta­tion.