LATT urges PM to withdraw remarks against independent senators

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) has called up­on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to with­draw her dis­parag­ing re­marks against the coun­try’s in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

And, pend­ing the adop­tion of that course of ac­tion, the LATT has al­so called up­on Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark to take the nec­es­sary ac­tion to en­sure the rep­u­ta­tion of the Sen­ate is pre­served.

“LATT re­minds the Prime Min­is­ter that our democ­ra­cy de­pends on her Gov­ern­ment hear­ing and con­sid­er­ing the views of those who do not sit at her ta­ble in Gov­ern­ment,” LATT said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

This, fol­low­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent slam­ming of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors as “sa­tan­ic,” “scum­bags “ and “demons” af­ter the in­de­pen­dents did not vote for Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill in the Sen­ate last Thurs­day.

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) al­so didn’t vote for the bill. With the com­bined nine in­de­pen­dents and six op­po­si­tion votes at 15 tied to 15 Gov­ern­ment votes for the bill, Mark cast a vote for the bill, en­abling its pas­sage 16-15. He, how­ev­er, did not main­tain the sta­tus quo, as Par­lia­ment pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers have done ac­cord­ing to Par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion.

Yes­ter­day, LATT, in a state­ment via pres­i­dent Lynette See­baran-Suite, SC, said LATT had not­ed the re­cent re­marks made by the Prime Min­is­ter “... again, dis­parag­ing in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors for vot­ing against leg­is­la­tion pro­posed by the Gov­ern­ment and this time, vow­ing not to ac­cept any amend­ments pro­posed by those Sen­a­tors in the fu­ture. “

“The Prime Min­is­ter al­so made dis­parag­ing re­marks against the in­de­pen­dent bench on the last oc­ca­sion that her Gov­ern­ment failed to se­cure their sup­port. On both oc­ca­sions, the Gov­ern­ment re­fused to en­ter­tain amend­ments pro­posed by the in­de­pen­dent bench which could have se­cured their sup­port.”

LATT al­so not­ed the re­port­ed re­marks of a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter/Sen­a­tor to the ef­fect that it was not the in­ten­tion of the framers of the Con­sti­tu­tion that an elect­ed gov­ern­ment should have to de­pend on the votes of mem­bers of the in­de­pen­dent bench and that re­quir­ing Gov­ern­ment to do so to pass leg­is­la­tion would be un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic.

Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate leader Dar­rell Al­la­har made this claim to Guardian Me­dia last Thurs­day, as the con­tro­ver­sy arose re­gard­ing Mark’s cast­ing vote in the SO Bill.

How­ev­er, LATT stat­ed, “The in­ten­tion of the framers of the Con­sti­tu­tion can be gleaned from the clear lan­guage of the Con­sti­tu­tion, sec­tions 39 and 40 of which pro­vide as fol­lows:

‘39. There shall be a Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go which shall con­sist of the Pres­i­dent, the Sen­ate and the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

40. (1) The Sen­ate shall con­sist of thir­ty-one mem­bers (in this Con­sti­tu­tion re­ferred to as “Sen­a­tors”) who shall be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent in ac­cor­dance with this sec­tion.

(2) Of the thir­ty-one Sen­a­tors—

(a) six­teen shall be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent act­ing in ac­cor­dance with the ad­vice of

the Prime Min­is­ter;

(b) six shall be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent act­ing in ac­cor­dance with the ad­vice of the

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and;

(c) nine shall be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent in his dis­cre­tion from out­stand­ing per­sons from eco­nom­ic or so­cial or com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er ma­jor fields of en­deav­our.’

LATT stat­ed that the lat­ter point was its em­pha­sis, adding, “Of course, no mem­ber of the Sen­ate (Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion or In­de­pen­dent) is elect­ed to the Sen­ate via the polls. Nev­er­the­less, the con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments on which our democ­ra­cy is found­ed quite clear­ly con­tem­plate that the cre­ation of leg­is­la­tion in­volves the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Sen­ate, a body which com­pris­es in part per­sons who are not aligned to the elect­ed gov­ern­ment.”

“That is the way the leg­isla­tive process has al­ways worked since in­de­pen­dence, and these are the arrange­ments un­der which every elect­ed gov­ern­ment has been con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly re­quired to op­er­ate to date,” LATT added, call­ing for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to with­draw her re­marks, for Mark to take the nec­es­sary ac­tion to en­sure the Sen­ate’s rep­u­ta­tion is pre­served and re­mind­ing the PM that T&T’s democ­ra­cy de­pends on her Gov­ern­ment hear­ing and con­sid­er­ing the views of those who do not sit at her ta­ble in Gov­ern­ment.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the is­sue, how­ev­er, PM Per­sad- Bisses­sar, said, “I’m very busy with work to­day, so I’d just say that I stand by my pre­vi­ous com­ments re pres­i­dent’s sen­a­tors and LATT, I wish every­one a won­der­ful week ahead filled with hap­pi­ness and love.”