MPs back PM’s stance against Independent Senators

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

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The in­de­pen­dence of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors has again come un­der scruti­ny from Gov­ern­ment MPs, with two Cab­i­net min­is­ters back­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­i­cism of the Sen­ate bench and rais­ing con­cerns about what they de­scribed as a pat­tern of ob­struc­tion since Gov­ern­ment took of­fice.

Speak­ing at a func­tion cel­e­brat­ing Chi­na’s Na­tion­al Day at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day, Hous­ing Min­is­ter and Ca­roni Cen­tral MP David Lee said he be­lieved the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors had con­sis­tent­ly sought to de­lay and op­pose Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion.

“The Prime Min­is­ter is cor­rect in her words and in what she said about the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors not be­ing fair to the coun­try and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Lee said.

“The Prime Min­is­ter al­so men­tioned that these In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors are not elect­ed, yet they are mak­ing de­mands on the Gov­ern­ment. What de­mands will con­tin­ue to be made by these In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors? It con­tin­ues to de­fy log­ic.”

Lee point­ed to con­cerns raised by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors dur­ing de­bate on Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill. He not­ed that af­ter the orig­i­nal ZOSO leg­is­la­tion was de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate on Jan­u­ary 27, 2026, the Gov­ern­ment made amend­ments, but sen­a­tors con­tin­ued to raise ob­jec­tions.

The orig­i­nal bill re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, while the re­vised leg­is­la­tion in the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill re­quired on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty.

Lee al­so ques­tioned whether the In­de­pen­dent bench would adopt a sim­i­lar ap­proach when the Sen­ate de­bates the Pro­cure­ment Amend­ment Bill to­mor­row.

“It is like they con­stant­ly want amend­ments. I per­son­al­ly do not think they want to pass a bill for the good of the coun­try,” he said.

“We are go­ing in­to the Sen­ate on Mon­day to de­bate the Pro­cure­ment Amend­ment Bill. I would not be sur­prised if these so-called In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors again vote against this bill. But time will tell. I leave it to good sense to pre­vail in the Sen­ate on Mon­day.”

Mean­while, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath al­so crit­i­cised the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors dur­ing an in­ter­view on state-owned broad­cast­er TTT.

“The Gov­ern­ment stands very res­olute and very strong with the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter in her con­dem­na­tion of the ac­tions of these nine hand-se­lect­ed per­sons by the pres­i­dent of the day,” Padarath said.

“There is no bet­ter way to de­scribe them than the words used by the Prime Min­is­ter for per­sons who un­der­mine the will of the pop­u­la­tion in terms of the poli­cies of the sit­ting gov­ern­ment.”

Padarath al­so de­fend­ed Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s de­ci­sion to cast the tie-break­ing vote in favour of the Gov­ern­ment dur­ing Wednes­day’s de­bate on the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill. He cit­ed pre­vi­ous in­stances in which for­mer House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George ex­er­cised a cast­ing vote, in­clud­ing dur­ing de­bate on the Bail Amend­ment Bill in 2017.

“I want to make it abun­dant­ly clear that the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go does not pro­vide guid­ance on how the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, who is the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, is to vote,” Padarath said.

“All it pro­vides is a dis­cre­tion for a tie to be bro­ken by the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, whether in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives or in the Sen­ate. There­fore, the onus is on the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, in his or her wis­dom, to break the tie. What oc­curred in the Sen­ate is not unique.”

Robin­son-Reg­is chal­lenges an­a­lyst’s claim

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is has re­ject­ed that po­si­tion. Her com­ments chal­lenged ar­gu­ments raised by po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Hamid Ghany fol­low­ing the con­tentious vot­ing process, which was ul­ti­mate­ly de­cid­ed by Mark’s cast­ing vote.

In a state­ment, the Trinci­ty/Mal­oney MP said ref­er­ences by Ghany to An­nisette-George’s 2017 cast­ing vote on the Bail Amend­ment Bill over­looked the pur­pose and ef­fect of the vote.

Ghany has ar­gued that An­nisette-George used her cast­ing vote to break a 17-17 tie dur­ing de­bate on the Bail Amend­ment Bill 2017 in favour of the then Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, Robin­son-Reg­is ex­plained, “There has been dis­cus­sion about the cast­ing vote she ex­er­cised in 2017, but say­ing she ‘vot­ed with the Gov­ern­ment’ miss­es the more im­por­tant ques­tion: What did the cast­ing vote ac­tu­al­ly do?

“The House di­vid­ed 17-17 on whether de­bate should be ad­journed to an­oth­er date. Speak­er An­nisette-George ex­er­cised her cast­ing vote in favour of the mo­tion. The mo­tion to ad­journ there­fore car­ried. So yes, the Chair vot­ed ‘Aye’. But the ef­fect of that vote was to post­pone the mat­ter and al­low fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion. That dis­tinc­tion mat­ters.”

She al­so cit­ed a 2004 rul­ing by then Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Dr Lin­da Ba­boolal in­volv­ing the Cari­com (Re­moval of Re­stric­tions) Bill.

“The Sen­ate Hansard records her vot­ing with the Noes be­cause she con­sid­ered it her du­ty to up­hold par­lia­men­tary prac­tice, with the ef­fect that the bill was not de­bat­ed at that sit­ting and sen­a­tors were giv­en fur­ther time to con­sid­er it,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

“And in 2025, cur­rent Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark, ORTT, when faced with tied votes in the Sen­ate, ex­press­ly de­scribed the cast­ing vote as be­ing in­tend­ed to ‘pre­serve the sta­tus quo’.”

Robin­son-Reg­is ar­gued that these prece­dents re­in­forced the prin­ci­ple that a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer’s cast­ing vote should main­tain the sta­tus quo rather than cre­ate a sub­stan­tive ma­jor­i­ty that the Gov­ern­ment was un­able to se­cure on its own.