Annisette-George rejects comparisons to Mark SO Bill casting vote

For­mer House speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George has re­ject­ed at­tempts to cite her 2017 cast­ing votes in Par­lia­ment as a prece­dent for Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s de­cid­ing vote on the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, ar­gu­ing that none of her votes de­ter­mined the fate of sub­stan­tive leg­is­la­tion.

In a de­tailed re­sponse to the con­tro­ver­sy, An­nisette-George said there was a “crit­i­cal dis­tinc­tion” be­tween the cir­cum­stances in which she ex­er­cised cast­ing votes as Speak­er and Mark’s de­ci­sion last Thurs­day to break a 15-15 Sen­ate dead­lock and se­cure pas­sage of the con­tentious leg­is­la­tion.

“What a stretch to state that the prece­dent for the breach of the Deni­son Prin­ci­ple by the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent on the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill was set in 2017 by the then Speak­er of the House!” An­nisette-George wrote in a state­ment dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 28.

Her com­ments di­rect­ly chal­lenged con­sti­tu­tion­al af­fairs ex­pert Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany, who has ar­gued that her use of cast­ing votes in 2017 ef­fec­tive­ly dis­placed the British par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion gov­ern­ing how a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer should break a tie. Ghany con­tends there has been no set­tled lo­cal prac­tice since then and that Mark was en­ti­tled to cast his vote as he did.

At the cen­tre of the dis­pute is the Deni­son Prin­ci­ple, a par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion which, ac­cord­ing to An­nisette-George, re­quires a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer to pre­serve the sta­tus quo when break­ing a tie and avoid us­ing a cast­ing vote to de­ter­mine a sub­stan­tive mat­ter if mem­bers are dead­locked.

She said the prin­ci­ple does not sim­ply re­quire a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer to vote against the gov­ern­ment. Rather, she said a cast­ing vote may be used to al­low fur­ther dis­cus­sion, while a fi­nal vote should pre­serve ex­ist­ing law or the ex­ist­ing po­si­tion un­less a ma­jor­i­ty sup­ports change.

An­nisette-George re­viewed four cast­ing votes she ex­er­cised in 2017 dur­ing pro­ceed­ings in­volv­ing the In­dictable Of­fences (Pre-Tri­al Pro­ce­dure) Bill, the Bail (Ac­cess to Bail) (Amend­ment) Bill and the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure (Plea Dis­cus­sion and Plea Agree­ment) Bill.

Ac­cord­ing to her, those votes ei­ther al­lowed de­bate and con­sid­er­a­tion to con­tin­ue or dealt with the tim­ing and con­tin­u­a­tion of par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings.

She not­ed that on March 15, 2017, when the House was tied 16-16 on a mo­tion to ad­journ de­bate on the In­dictable Of­fences Bill, she vot­ed in favour of main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo. In Sep­tem­ber that year, she al­so broke sep­a­rate 17-17 ties dur­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of Sen­ate amend­ments and on a mo­tion to ad­journ the House.

How­ev­er, she main­tained,”In none of the four in­stances cit­ed by the Pro­fes­sor was the cast­ing vote a de­ter­min­ing or fi­nal vote on the sub­stan­tive is­sue be­fore the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”

“The four 2017 cast­ing votes were not used to de­ter­mine sub­stan­tive leg­isla­tive change. That is the crit­i­cal dis­tinc­tion which the Pro­fes­sor’s analy­sis over­looks,” she added.

That dis­tinc­tion has be­come cen­tral to the de­bate sur­round­ing Mark’s ac­tion be­cause his cast­ing vote came at the third read­ing of the SOB, the fi­nal stage re­quired for its pas­sage in the Sen­ate.

All 15 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors sup­port­ed the leg­is­la­tion, while the six Op­po­si­tion and nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it. With the cham­ber dead­locked 15-15, Mark ex­er­cised his cast­ing vote in favour of the bill, re­sult­ing in its pas­sage by a 16-15 mar­gin.

The con­tro­ver­sy has prompt­ed com­pet­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion. For­mer House speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed has al­so ar­gued that An­nisette-George’s 2017 votes were ma­te­ri­al­ly dif­fer­ent be­cause they did not fi­nal­ly de­ter­mine gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion. Ghany, how­ev­er, main­tains her ac­tions al­tered the lo­cal prac­tice sur­round­ing cast­ing votes.

While An­nisette-George ac­knowl­edged that T&T has ex­pe­ri­enced a turn­ing point in its ob­ser­vance of the British par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion, she firm­ly re­ject­ed Ghany’s con­tention that the shift oc­curred un­der her Speak­er­ship.

“The pro­fes­sor is cor­rect that there has oc­curred a turn­ing point in the set­tled prac­tice in the ob­ser­vance of the British Par­lia­men­tary Con­ven­tion for pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers of the Deni­son Prin­ci­ple. But he is all wrong in iden­ti­fy­ing 2017 as the date,” she said.