Alexander defends PM, questions independence of Senate bench

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

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Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der has pushed back against the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) af­ter it called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to with­draw re­marks she made about in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors fol­low­ing their re­jec­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill.

The con­tro­ver­sy stems from the Prime Min­is­ter’s crit­i­cism of the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors who vot­ed against the bill. Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed them as “sa­tan­ic” and “de­mon­ic” and said her Gov­ern­ment would no longer ac­cept amend­ments pro­posed by in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors on leg­is­la­tion.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, LATT ex­pressed con­cern over the re­marks and urged the Prime Min­is­ter to re­tract them.

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Alexan­der ques­tioned whether the cur­rent in­de­pen­dent bench was car­ry­ing out its con­sti­tu­tion­al role. He ar­gued that in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are in­tend­ed to func­tion as in­di­vid­ual voic­es rather than as a col­lec­tive vot­ing bloc.

“They’re sup­posed to be nine in­di­vid­ual piv­ot points in the con­ver­sa­tion to guide the process for­ward. That’s not what’s hap­pen­ing,” he said.

Alexan­der said a sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis con­duct­ed by his team sug­gest­ed that on mat­ters of sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic con­cern, the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors had vot­ed to­geth­er un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion. He said that pat­tern was in­con­sis­tent with the pur­pose of the in­de­pen­dent bench.

He al­so crit­i­cised the sen­a­tors’ de­ci­sion to re­ject the SO Bill de­spite sev­er­al ex­press­ing sup­port for as­pects of the leg­is­la­tion.

Re­fer­ring to In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Zo­la Phillips, Alexan­der said he ex­pect­ed an ab­sten­tion rather than a vote against the bill af­ter hear­ing her iden­ti­fy both pos­i­tive el­e­ments and ar­eas of con­cern.

He main­tained the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready made sig­nif­i­cant con­ces­sions af­ter con­cerns raised dur­ing de­bate on the de­feat­ed Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion ear­li­er this year.

“If you’re look­ing for a per­fect law, you’ll nev­er find a per­fect law,” he said, adding that leg­is­la­tion must be craft­ed to suit lo­cal re­al­i­ties.

He al­so ques­tioned the process by which in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are ap­point­ed, rais­ing con­cerns about whether the Pres­i­dent, who makes the ap­point­ments, could be per­ceived as de­tached from pre­vi­ous po­lit­i­cal as­so­ci­a­tions.

Alexan­der fur­ther ar­gued that the cur­rent sen­a­tors were “not as in­de­pen­dent as they should be,” point­ing to oc­ca­sions when sen­a­tors re­ferred to one an­oth­er dur­ing de­bate.

On LATT’s in­ter­ven­tion, Alexan­der said every­one was en­ti­tled to an opin­ion but stressed the Prime Min­is­ter pos­sessed a di­rect elec­toral man­date.

“The Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go has a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty for a rea­son. She was over­whelm­ing­ly elect­ed to lead this coun­try and to fix it. She has a man­date from the peo­ple and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion has no such man­date.”

He said if Per­sad-Bisses­sar “sees the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors as an ob­sta­cle to that progress, she has my sup­port.”

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor and deputy Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment leader San­jiv Bood­hu strong­ly con­demned both the PM’s re­marks and Gov­ern­ment’s crit­i­cism of the in­de­pen­dent bench.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Bood­hu de­scribed the com­ments as “words and sen­ti­ments to be con­demned in the strongest of man­ners.”

He said the in­de­pen­dent bench ex­ists as an im­por­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guard and ar­gued there was no ba­sis for the at­tacks di­rect­ed them. He al­so chal­lenged sug­ges­tions that the sen­a­tors had con­sis­tent­ly op­posed the Gov­ern­ment. Ac­cord­ing to Bood­hu, avail­able vot­ing records in­di­cate the in­de­pen­dent bench has more of­ten sup­port­ed Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion than op­posed it.

“So, it’s rather strange that on an ap­pear­ance of true in­de­pen­dence, if you look at the num­bers alone, the vot­ing pat­terns of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, if they are vot­ing more times than not for the Gov­ern­ment, then what is the at­tack about?” he asked.

He said dis­agree­ment over leg­is­la­tion was a nor­mal part of par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy and not­ed that in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors had clear­ly out­lined their con­cerns with the SO Bill dur­ing de­bate.

Bood­hu said their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to as­sess leg­is­la­tion based on their pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­tise, aca­d­e­m­ic back­grounds and civic oblig­a­tions.

He al­so warned that the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments could dis­cour­age peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in pub­lic ser­vice from as­pir­ing to serve as sen­a­tors.

“There are peo­ple who wish to con­tribute to pub­lic life with­out be­com­ing in­volved in par­ti­san pol­i­tics,” he said. “The feed­back that the Prime Min­is­ter is giv­ing to the in­de­pen­dent bench now says that if you’re not ex­er­cis­ing a par­ti­san po­si­tion, you’re go­ing to be crit­i­cised, and in the most vile of means you’re go­ing to be crit­i­cised.”

He al­so ad­dressed crit­i­cism sur­round­ing Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s cast­ing vote, which se­cured pas­sage of the bill.

Bood­hu said both the Con­sti­tu­tion and Sen­ate Stand­ing Or­ders per­mit the sen­ate pres­i­dent to ex­er­cise a cast­ing vote. As such, he ar­gued, the is­sue was not one of con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty or pro­ce­dur­al breach but rather one in­volv­ing par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion.

He not­ed that Mark had in­di­cat­ed he would lat­er pro­vide the le­gal rea­son­ing and re­search un­der­pin­ning his de­ci­sion.