Al-Rawi: Govt rejected 106 amendments to bill

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

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Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has re­ject­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s claims of a “po­lit­i­cal pact” with the in­de­pen­dent bench, ar­gu­ing that re­cent vot­ing pat­terns in the Sen­ate show law­mak­ers act­ing on con­science and the mer­its of leg­is­la­tion rather than un­der op­po­si­tion di­rec­tion.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Beck­les point­ed to the vot­ing record of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors on a dozen pieces of leg­is­la­tion de­bat­ed be­tween June 2025 and Jan­u­ary, not­ing wide vari­a­tion since the Gov­ern­ment took of­fice in April. Mea­sures ranged from the out­right re­jec­tion of the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty Bill to unan­i­mous sup­port for the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice Act.

“Now you tell me, based on that ev­i­dence, how could the Prime Min­is­ter con­clude and make those state­ments about the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors,” she said in jus­ti­fy­ing why the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill was de­feat­ed in the Up­per House.

“But we must take this in con­text, that this has been the pat­tern of this Gov­ern­ment since they came in­to of­fice. And what is the pat­tern? The pat­tern is gov­er­nance by bul­ly­ing, threat­en­ing and in­tim­i­da­tion, with the ex­pec­ta­tion that peo­ple are go­ing to just give up and do ex­act­ly what they want. And they are not on­ly do­ing that to these in­sti­tu­tions, but they are do­ing that to mem­bers of the pub­lic.”

She ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of adopt­ing a con­fronta­tion­al ap­proach, in­clud­ing in the Sen­ate.

“The strat­e­gy, even in the Sen­ate, was to bul­ly both the in­de­pen­dents and the op­po­si­tion,” she said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing pub­lic con­cern about crime, Beck­les said the Op­po­si­tion could not sup­port flawed leg­is­la­tion.

“I have said it from day one, and I am go­ing to say it again—if you bring good leg­is­la­tion, we will sup­port the leg­is­la­tion. And if you bring bad leg­is­la­tion, we will not sup­port that leg­is­la­tion.”

She fur­ther crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment for what she de­scribed as an un­will­ing­ness to en­gage with al­ter­na­tive views.

“That is the prob­lem. If you bring leg­is­la­tion be­fore the Par­lia­ment, at least demon­strate a will­ing­ness to lis­ten, to con­sult, to ne­go­ti­ate. And demon­strate to the pub­lic that you are gov­ern­ing, un­der­stand­ing that you are serv­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and you’re not serv­ing your­self.”

She said the ad­min­is­tra­tion at­tempt­ed to rush the ZOSO Bill through Par­lia­ment with­out ac­cept­ing amend­ments.

“The Gov­ern­ment was not pre­pared, at all, to con­sid­er one sin­gle amend­ment. Now we sus­pect that be­cause of the late­ness of the leg­is­la­tion, be­cause of their in­com­pe­tence and be­cause of the fact that the SoE ends on Sat­ur­day, they found them­selves in a predica­ment and they were pre­pared to rush the leg­is­la­tion and not lis­ten to Op­po­si­tion, not lis­ten to in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors and not lis­ten to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Be­cause at no time can they say to any­one that they con­sult­ed with any­body.”

She added that the Gov­ern­ment ap­peared to be­lieve its par­lia­men­tary num­bers guar­an­teed pas­sage.

“They be­lieve be­cause they have 26 seats, plus two To­ba­go seats held by the TPP, that they can have their way,” she said.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi al­so crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the bill, say­ing more than 100 pro­posed amend­ments were re­ject­ed be­fore the leg­is­la­tion failed in the Sen­ate.

Al-Rawi said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment sub­mit­ted 63 amend­ments, with a to­tal of 106 pro­pos­als com­ing from op­po­si­tion and in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors com­bined. He said the changes were aimed at re­mov­ing what he de­scribed as un­con­sti­tu­tion­al po­lice pow­ers from the army, strength­en­ing safe­guards and im­prov­ing trans­paren­cy.

He said amend­ments were al­so pro­posed to en­sure over­sight by the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty and to ad­dress pro­vi­sions in the De­fence Act. Al-Rawi iden­ti­fied Clause 13 as par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tentious, not­ing the Op­po­si­tion sought a clear mech­a­nism to iden­ti­fy joint se­cu­ri­ty forces op­er­at­ing with­in ZOSOs.

He warned that crime could es­ca­late once the State of Emer­gency ex­pires on Sat­ur­day and de­tainees are re­leased.

“We put in the safe­guards be­cause as mur­der and crime will es­ca­late, as the State of Emer­gency comes to an end on the 31st of Jan­u­ary and as every­body is go­ing to walk out of de­ten­tion, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of them are go­ing to go not hav­ing had an in­ter­view by the po­lice. So, you just lock them up for the State of Emer­gency. What are you go­ing to do?”

Al-Rawi ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment an­tic­i­pat­ed the bill’s fail­ure.

“The Gov­ern­ment, I be­lieve, re­al­ly want­ed this law to fail. Be­cause they knew it was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, they re­fused to ac­cept amend­ments and their in­ten­tion will be to blame the Op­po­si­tion and the in­de­pen­dents for the lack of pas­sage of the law when crime starts to es­ca­late. So, I want to mark the spot to­day on be­half of the Op­po­si­tion—look to the amend­ments that we put for­ward. You will see how we in­tend­ed to as­sist in con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty. Look to our deep con­cerns that you can­not just go in­to zones and cre­ate a di­vi­sion in so­ci­ety of the type that that bill pro­posed.”

Al-Rawi ex­plained that the spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty re­quire­ment re­flect­ed deep le­gal con­cerns, par­tic­u­lar­ly around grant­i­ng po­lice pow­ers to the De­fence Force and the po­ten­tial so­cial con­se­quences of de­clar­ing zones of spe­cial op­er­a­tion.

He not­ed that it was on­ly on Ju­ly 31, 2025, that the Court of Ap­peal ad­dressed the scope of mil­i­tary au­thor­i­ty, ref­er­enc­ing the Wayne Kublals­ingh case, which con­firmed that the army op­er­ates un­der the gen­er­al di­rec­tion of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

By con­trast, he said, the po­lice are gov­erned by the in­de­pen­dent Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, a dis­tinc­tion he ar­gues makes the grant­i­ng of po­lice pow­ers to sol­diers con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly un­safe with­out strict safe­guards.

He al­so ref­er­enced the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (Priv­i­leges) Act, which ad­dress­es at­tempts to in­flu­ence how par­lia­men­tar­i­ans vote, sug­gest­ing that pub­lic crit­i­cism of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors by the Prime Min­is­ter could fall with­in the scope of re­view by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.