Independent Senator Vieira fires back at PM

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira says it will take “a lot more than holy wa­ter and mantras” to get him to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s Pro­cure­ment Bill, as he fired back at Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar by turn­ing her de­scrip­tion of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors as “sa­tan­ic” and “de­mon­ic” back on the Gov­ern­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate.

Vieira, who raised sev­er­al con­cerns about the pro­posed changes to the coun­try’s pro­cure­ment frame­work, al­so re­vealed he de­lib­er­ate­ly de­cid­ed against prepar­ing amend­ments to the bill be­cause of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­c­la­ra­tion that her Gov­ern­ment would no longer en­ter­tain amend­ments from the in­de­pen­dent bench.

Con­clud­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, Vieira made it clear the bill in its present form would not get his vote.

“Mr Pres­i­dent, it is go­ing to take a lot more than holy wa­ter and mantras to get me to vote in sup­port of this bill,” he said.

It was not his on­ly ref­er­ence to the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­cent crit­i­cism of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

Ear­li­er, as he warned about the need for strong safe­guards to pro­tect pub­lic mon­ey from cor­rup­tion and abuse, Vieira sar­cas­ti­cal­ly em­braced the la­bels di­rect­ed at the bench.

“Now, Mr Pres­i­dent, a ben­e­fit of be­ing sa­tan­ic and de­mon­ic is that I have in­sight in­to the souls of men,” Vieira said.

“I un­der­stand those whose moral com­pass­es and codes are com­pro­mised, as I un­der­stand the sev­en dead­ly sins, in par­tic­u­lar, greed.”

His re­marks came af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar strong­ly crit­i­cised all nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors fol­low­ing their de­ci­sion not to sup­port the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill last week.

The Prime Min­is­ter de­scribed the sen­a­tors as “sa­tan­ic,” “demons” and “scum­bags” and ac­cused them of sid­ing with crim­i­nals by re­ject­ing the crime-fight­ing leg­is­la­tion. She sub­se­quent­ly said her Gov­ern­ment would no longer ac­cept amend­ments from the in­de­pen­dent bench.

That de­c­la­ra­tion has now spilled over in­to the de­bate on the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill.

Vieira said de­spite his con­cerns, he be­lieved the Pro­cure­ment Bill could be im­proved.

“With all the faults and po­ten­tial for abuse, with the right amend­ments, I be­lieve this bill is sal­vage­able,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said the Prime Min­is­ter’s stat­ed po­si­tion meant he saw lit­tle point in spend­ing time draft­ing amend­ments.

“I had hoped that the bench­es would have worked to­geth­er to avoid a fi­nan­cial am­bush dressed up as ease of do­ing busi­ness. But in light of the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­clared re­fusal to ac­cept amend­ments from the in­de­pen­dent bench, I de­cid­ed to save my time and en­er­gy,” Vieira said.

He said he spent two days work­ing on amend­ments to the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion in an at­tempt to im­prove it, but those pro­pos­als were not ac­cept­ed.

“To no avail. That’s not hap­pen­ing to­day,” he said.

The Pro­cure­ment Bill pro­pos­es sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant changes to the ex­ist­ing pro­cure­ment frame­work, in­clud­ing ex­pand­ed ex­emp­tions cov­er­ing en­er­gy, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships for pub­lic hous­ing and emer­gency pro­cure­ment. It al­so pro­pos­es in­creas­ing the sim­pli­fied pro­cure­ment thresh­old to $2 mil­lion for cer­tain pub­lic bod­ies, while mak­ing changes to the pow­ers and con­se­quences flow­ing from in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR).

Vieira said he was not op­posed to mak­ing the pro­cure­ment sys­tem more ef­fi­cient, ac­knowl­edg­ing com­plaints that the ex­ist­ing process can be cum­ber­some and the cur­rent $1 mil­lion thresh­old may be too low for ma­jor min­istries and State en­ter­pris­es.

His con­cern, how­ev­er, was that the cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect of the amend­ments would move the coun­try away from in­de­pen­dent­ly reg­u­lat­ed pro­cure­ment to­wards greater ad­min­is­tra­tive dis­cre­tion, with re­port­ing oc­cur­ring af­ter trans­ac­tions have al­ready tak­en place.

One of his ma­jor con­cerns sur­rounds the pro­posed $2 mil­lion thresh­old.

Vieira said in­creas­ing the fig­ure from $1 mil­lion was not in­her­ent­ly un­rea­son­able. His ob­jec­tion was to re­mov­ing the sim­pli­fied pro­cure­ment frame­work gov­ern­ing trans­ac­tions be­neath that thresh­old.

He ques­tioned what would pre­vent a $10 mil­lion re­quire­ment from be­ing di­vid­ed in­to five pro­cure­ments of $2 mil­lion, warn­ing that leg­is­la­tion had to con­tem­plate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of peo­ple at­tempt­ing to cir­cum­vent the rules.

Vieira sug­gest­ed Gov­ern­ment could in­stead in­crease the thresh­old while re­tain­ing the sim­pli­fied pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions, say­ing this would pro­vide greater ef­fi­cien­cy with­out cre­at­ing a “reg­u­la­to­ry vac­u­um.”

He al­so raised con­cerns about the breadth of the pro­posed ex­emp­tions.

While ac­cept­ing that en­er­gy com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty mar­kets may re­quire greater flex­i­bil­i­ty, Vieira ques­tioned why that should re­sult in the en­er­gy sec­tor as a whole es­cap­ing pro­cure­ment over­sight.

He ar­gued that ex­emp­tions should ap­ply to spe­cif­ic trans­ac­tions re­quir­ing spe­cial treat­ment rather than en­tire in­sti­tu­tions or sec­tors.

Vieira took a sim­i­lar po­si­tion on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, ac­knowl­edg­ing that some sen­si­tive pur­chas­es can­not be sub­ject­ed to or­di­nary pub­lic ten­der­ing but ar­gu­ing that con­fi­den­tial­i­ty should not mean an ab­sence of ac­count­abil­i­ty. He sug­gest­ed sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion could be sup­plied con­fi­den­tial­ly to the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor while re­tain­ing an au­dit­ing role for the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

He al­so ques­tioned why emer­gency pro­cure­ment should be placed out­side the act, rather than es­tab­lish­ing an ex­pe­dit­ed emer­gency pro­ce­dure with­in the pro­cure­ment regime, with re­quire­ments for records, re­port­ing and sub­se­quent au­dit­ing.

Vieira was al­so con­cerned about pro­posed re­stric­tions sur­round­ing OPR in­ves­ti­ga­tions, warn­ing against weak­en­ing the reg­u­la­tor to the point where it was ef­fec­tive­ly left “shout­ing from the side­lines.”

To­wards the end of his con­tri­bu­tion, Vieira sug­gest­ed there was a par­al­lel be­tween what he be­lieved was hap­pen­ing to the reg­u­la­tor and the Gov­ern­ment’s treat­ment of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

“Sad­ly, like us on the in­de­pen­dent bench, there are those who would like to see her too mar­gin­alised, help­less or made use­less,” he said.

Vieira said the is­sue ul­ti­mate­ly came down to how much dis­cre­tion the State should have over pub­lic mon­ey with­out in­de­pen­dent pro­ce­dur­al safe­guards.

“We spent years build­ing this sys­tem. Let’s im­prove it. Let’s sim­pli­fy it and mod­ernise it. Let’s make it work faster. But let’s not dis­man­tle it,” he said.

“I am not will­ing to sac­ri­fice the guardrails of good gov­er­nance, os­ten­si­bly on the al­tar of ef­fi­cien­cy and ease of do­ing busi­ness.”