Govt’s Senate leader defends Senate President over SOB vote

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate Leader Dar­rell Al­la­har yes­ter­day de­fend­ed Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s de­ci­sion to cast the de­cid­ing vote on the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, ar­gu­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion was nev­er in­tend­ed to leave an elect­ed gov­ern­ment de­pen­dent on the sup­port or ab­sten­tion of an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor to pass or­di­nary leg­is­la­tion.

“I do not think that the framers of the Con­sti­tu­tion ever in­tend­ed that an elect­ed gov­ern­ment should de­pend on the vote or ab­sten­tion of even a sin­gle so-called In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor to pass an or­di­nary bill,” Al­la­har said.

“If that were so, a de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment would not be able to gov­ern and would be held to ran­som by an un­elect­ed func­tionary cho­sen by the Pres­i­dent.”

His com­ment came even as for­mer deputy house speak­er Dr Fuad Khan raised con­cerns over Mark’s de­ci­sion to use his cast­ing vote to pass the Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, not­ing that Mark in­voked the op­po­site prin­ci­ple dur­ing tied votes on the Chil­dren’s Life Fund (Amend­ment) Bill in 2025.

“If the sta­tus quo prin­ci­ple was ap­pro­pri­ate when Mr Mark in­voked it in a pre­vi­ous tied vote in 2025, the pub­lic is en­ti­tled to know why that prin­ci­ple was not ap­plied on Thurs­day (yes­ter­day),” Khan said.

All Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors vot­ed in favour of the leg­is­la­tion, while Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sen­a­tors and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it, lead­ing to a 15-15 dead­lock. The bill was ul­ti­mate­ly passed on Mark’s cast­ing vote and would have failed with­out it.

The leg­is­la­tion re­quired on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage in both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate. While the Gov­ern­ment was able to pass the bill in the House us­ing its ma­jor­i­ty, the Sen­ate’s com­po­si­tion meant Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors held 15 votes, equal to the com­bined to­tal of Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

Mark’s de­ci­sion has drawn com­par­isons with his han­dling of three sep­a­rate 15-15 votes dur­ing the Com­mit­tee Stage of the Chil­dren’s Life Fund (Amend­ment) Bill on June 23, 2025.

On each oc­ca­sion, Mark ex­er­cised his cast­ing vote on the ba­sis that his du­ty was to pre­serve the sta­tus quo rather than de­ter­mine the out­come ac­cord­ing to per­son­al pref­er­ence.

Par­lia­men­tary records quote Mark as say­ing: “I have a cast­ing vote and I cast my vote in favour of the in­ten­tion of the sta­tus quo. I se­cure and favour the sta­tus quo ... so the orig­i­nal pro­vi­sion of the bill re­mains.”

As a re­sult, the pro­posed amend­ments failed and the leg­is­la­tion re­mained un­changed.

Khan ques­tioned whether Mark’s lat­est ac­tion had brought the Sen­ate in­to dis­re­pute.

“A cast­ing vote must not be­come a po­lit­i­cal in­stru­ment. Is Trinidad and To­ba­go slow­ly slid­ing in­to an un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state?” he asked.

He ar­gued that the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent’s cast­ing vote is not an or­di­nary vote but an ex­cep­tion­al con­sti­tu­tion­al mech­a­nism in­tend­ed to re­solve equal di­vi­sions in the cham­ber.

“It must there­fore be ex­er­cised with the great­est pos­si­ble neu­tral­i­ty, re­straint and re­gard for par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion,” Khan said.

“Pres­i­dent Mark him­self demon­strat­ed the ap­pro­pri­ate ap­proach in 2025 when con­front­ed with tied votes. He ex­press­ly stat­ed his cast­ing vote was be­ing used ‘to se­cure the sta­tus quo’. That makes the present con­tro­ver­sy all the more dis­turb­ing.”

Khan con­tend­ed that if par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion re­quires a cast­ing vote to pre­serve the ex­ist­ing po­si­tion when the Sen­ate is even­ly di­vid­ed, the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent can­not use that vote to ef­fect a sub­stan­tive change in the coun­try’s leg­isla­tive frame­work.

“A cast­ing vote should not be­come a mech­a­nism by which one side of a di­vid­ed Sen­ate ob­tains a vic­to­ry that it could not ob­tain through its own nu­mer­i­cal strength,” he said.

Khan said the Sen­ate’s con­sti­tu­tion­al role is to pro­vide re­straint, de­lib­er­a­tion and in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny of leg­is­la­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly mea­sures in­volv­ing ex­tra­or­di­nary polic­ing pow­ers, mil­i­tary as­sis­tance and spe­cial op­er­a­tions.

He said the pub­lic was en­ti­tled to an­swers on sev­er­al ques­tions, in­clud­ing: What pre­cise­ly was the sta­tus quo at the mo­ment the cast­ing vote was ex­er­cised? What par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion was re­lied up­on? Why was the vote ex­er­cised in a man­ner that de­part­ed from the prin­ci­ple pre­vi­ous­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed in 2025 by the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, name­ly to ‘se­cure the sta­tus quo’?

“These ques­tions go to the cred­i­bil­i­ty and im­par­tial­i­ty of the Sen­ate it­self. The Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate oc­cu­pies an of­fice that must stand above Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion. Once the Chair be­comes per­ceived as de­ter­min­ing sub­stan­tive leg­isla­tive out­comes rather than neu­tral­ly ap­ply­ing par­lia­men­tary rules, pub­lic con­fi­dence in the in­sti­tu­tion is in­evitably placed at risk.”

Khan stressed that the is­sue was not whether in­di­vid­u­als sup­port­ed or op­posed the bill, but whether par­lia­men­tary rules had been ap­plied con­sis­tent­ly.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­ate Leader Dr Amery Browne de­clined to com­ment di­rect­ly on Mark’s vote.

In­stead, Browne re­called re­marks made by late for­mer PNM Sen­ate leader Frankie Khan.

“I on­ly re­call the words of the late PNM Sen­ate leader Frankie Khan, who told us that if a gov­ern­ment presents a Bill or any oth­er pro­pos­al to the Sen­ate and it fails to ob­tain the sup­port of at least nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, then it is re­al­ly a sign that the gov­ern­ment should re-look the is­sue and con­sid­er re­turn­ing to the draw­ing board on it,” Browne said.

“Clear­ly, this UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion has a very dif­fer­ent view of democ­ra­cy and Par­lia­ment’s role.”