Beckles, Rowley condemn PM’s ‘attack’ on independent senators

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley have con­demned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to re­ject fu­ture amend­ments pro­posed by the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, with Beck­les warn­ing that the move could sig­nal an at­tempt to re­shape the In­de­pen­dent bench in the Gov­ern­ment’s favour.

In a state­ment ti­tled “Kam­la’s Bid for UNC Dic­ta­tor­ship,” Beck­les ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of lay­ing the ground­work to con­sol­i­date po­lit­i­cal pow­er.

“What right-think­ing cit­i­zens must note is what this Gov­ern­ment in­tends to do: re­move the sit­ting Pres­i­dent in 2028 and ap­point a UNC ‘in­de­pen­dent’ bench to take Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to the dark­est times it has ever faced… where she reigns as its Supreme Leader,” Beck­les said, with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence for the claim.

She ar­gued that the dis­pute with the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors forms part of a broad­er po­lit­i­cal agen­da.

“This is an at­tempt to un­der­mine the very essence of democ­ra­cy and sol­i­dar­i­ty by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and to de­monise Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

“On the sur­face, it is an at­tack on this present bench, but it is a warn­ing that the UNC in­tends to take Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to a spi­ralling au­to­crat­ic dic­ta­tor­ship.”

Row­ley al­so crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s treat­ment of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, de­scrib­ing it as an at­tack on their con­sti­tu­tion­al role.

“This un­war­rant­ed, sus­tained, vul­gar at­tack on the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors is to be con­demned in the strongest terms, since it is the Gov­ern­ment’s way of telling us that they are not pre­pared to be con­strained or made to com­ply with the let­ter and spir­it of our Con­sti­tu­tion,” Row­ley wrote in a Face­book post yes­ter­day.

He fur­ther al­leged that Gov­ern­ment was cre­at­ing di­vi­sions with­in the coun­try.

“What is even more alarm­ing is that as the Gov­ern­ment ini­ti­ates this mis­be­hav­iour against of­fi­cers of state whose sa­cred du­ty is to stand guard against gov­ern­men­tal ex­cess­es, the Prime Min­is­ter has al­so em­barked on racial, eth­nic and ge­o­graph­i­cal sep­a­ra­tions with­in the coun­try,” he wrote.

Row­ley warned that ef­forts to in­tim­i­date in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors could un­der­mine Par­lia­ment’s con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards.

“For them to be open­ly and freely tear­ing up such pro­vi­sions of the writ­ten Con­sti­tu­tion by at­tempt­ing to neuter, fright­en and ren­der in­ef­fec­tive the in­volve­ment of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors in the work of Par­lia­ment is the worst form of sub­lim­i­nal pow­er grab­bing, which must re­dound to the detri­ment of our so­ci­ety,” he said.

Row­ley al­so main­tained that Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime agen­da can­not jus­ti­fy its cur­rent ap­proach.

“No right-think­ing cit­i­zen will dis­agree with the Gov­ern­ment mak­ing every rea­son­able and vi­sion­ary ef­fort to re­spond to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments that prey on the na­tion, but that as­sign­ment can­not jus­ti­fy the abuse of pow­er, con­sti­tu­tion­al side­step­ping and gov­ern­men­tal over­reach,” he wrote.

The crit­i­cism fol­lows last week’s Sen­ate de­bate on the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, when all nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against the leg­is­la­tion. The vote end­ed in a 15-15 dead­lock, which was bro­ken by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s cast­ing vote.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pre­vi­ous­ly said the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors would be “rel­e­gat­ed to use­less­ness” in the leg­isla­tive process. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day, she re­it­er­at­ed that the Gov­ern­ment would not ac­cept any amend­ments from the In­de­pen­dent bench, whom she de­scribed as “Lu­cifer­ian mon­sters.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James, how­ev­er, said the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion does not con­sti­tute a con­sti­tu­tion­al breach.

“There’s no con­tra­ven­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion. She is ex­er­cis­ing a po­lit­i­cal choice. There’s noth­ing that says that she has to lis­ten to the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. But we ex­pect that to hap­pen,” James said.

While main­tain­ing no con­sti­tu­tion­al vi­o­la­tion had oc­curred, James ques­tioned the po­lit­i­cal wis­dom of the Prime Min­is­ter’s stance.

“It makes her look like a lit­tle child. It sounds in­fan­tile for her to be say­ing she’s not go­ing to pay at­ten­tion to what the In­de­pen­dent bench pro­pos­es. That’s not how a prime min­is­ter talks,” he said.

James added that the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion rais­es broad­er ques­tions about gov­er­nance and the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Gov­ern­ment and the In­de­pen­dent bench.

For­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Suni­ty Ma­haraj urged the nine sen­a­tors to con­tin­ue car­ry­ing out their du­ties with­out fear or favour.

“I have every con­fi­dence in the in­de­pen­dent bench and the abil­i­ty of its mem­bers to re­view every piece of draft leg­is­la­tion that comes be­fore them and de­cide on their own whether or not to sup­port it,” she said.

Ma­haraj char­ac­terised the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks as an at­tempt at in­tim­i­da­tion.

“One doesn’t ac­cept such an ap­point­ment with­out be­ing aware of the risk of in­tim­i­da­tion, which is what I be­lieve the PM’s lan­guage is all about,” she said.

“What I hear are words of abuse, in­sult and dero­ga­tion which do not amount to ev­i­dence of any­thing, cer­tain­ly not col­lu­sion or po­lit­i­cal mo­ti­va­tion. There­fore, I dis­miss it as po­lit­i­cal pique at not hav­ing one’s way.”

She sug­gest­ed the prac­ti­cal im­pact on Sen­ate pro­ceed­ings may be lim­it­ed, not­ing gov­ern­ments have his­tor­i­cal­ly been re­luc­tant to ac­cept amend­ments from in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

“From my ob­ser­va­tion, gov­ern­ments gen­er­al­ly tend to be dis­mis­sive of amend­ments pro­posed by the In­de­pen­dents, so her threat may not ac­tu­al­ly make much of a dif­fer­ence to the Sen­ate’s work,” Ma­haraj said.

Nev­er­the­less, she ar­gued that the dis­pute car­ries broad­er im­pli­ca­tions.

“This is not a con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sue but a po­lit­i­cal is­sue with con­sti­tu­tion­al ram­i­fi­ca­tions, in that it cre­ates what, in my view, is an ar­ti­fi­cial ob­sta­cle to the smooth run­ning of the Sen­ate by in­vent­ing a con­fronta­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the in­de­pen­dent bench,” she said.

“The in­de­pen­dents sim­ply have to get on with their work and al­low the coun­try to see them as the se­ri­ous, com­mit­ted peo­ple they are, while al­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter to pro­ceed as she wish­es. Whether there is a po­lit­i­cal cost to her words is a mat­ter for her.”