Govt senators silent amid Kamla’s allegations against independent bench

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

There has been si­lence from the gov­ern­ment bench in the Up­per House, as sev­er­al gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors have re­fused to iden­ti­fy the two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ac­cused by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of at­tempt­ing to so­lic­it per­son­al favours to se­cure their vote for the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) bill. 

This fol­lows Tues­day’s failed Sen­ate vote on the ZOSO bill, which saw an al­most unan­i­mous op­po­si­tion from the in­de­pen­dent bench, with eight of the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ing against it.

De­spite pre­vi­ous­ly la­belling the in­de­pen­dent bench as “bootlick­ers” and now pos­si­bly breach­ing sev­er­al laws, the Prime Min­is­ter has not named any names.

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to the gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, sev­er­al of them re­mained tight-lipped and de­clined to com­ment on the is­sue. 

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der, he said, “I can’t give you any in­for­ma­tion. It’s the Prime Min­is­ter’s sto­ry to tell. It’s not my place to dis­close the in­for­ma­tion.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and AI Sen­a­tor Do­minic Smith said, “I don’t have any com­ment on this.”

Echo­ing the same sen­ti­ments yes­ter­day, Labour Min­is­ter Sen­a­tor Leroy Bap­tiste said, “I have no com­ment on that.”

Step­ping in as a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor dur­ing the ZOSO de­bate in the Sen­ate last week, Rasheed Daniel told Guardian Me­dia that the Gov­ern­ment does not buy votes and that he con­tin­ues to sup­port the pro­posed ZOSO bill. He, how­ev­er, did not con­firm nor de­ny any in­volve­ment in the in­de­pen­dent bench con­tro­ver­sy.