Kamla turns up heat on Independents

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

With the con­tentious Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill head­ing to the Sen­ate this week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her Gov­ern­ment is turn­ing up the heat and will not change its po­si­tion on re­ject­ing every amend­ment pro­posed by the nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day dou­bled down on the po­si­tion she first an­nounced af­ter all nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors vot­ed against the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill last week, say­ing they would now be “rel­e­gat­ed to use­less­ness” in the leg­isla­tive process.

Guardian Me­dia asked the Prime Min­is­ter whether, with the Pro­cure­ment Bill now head­ing to the Up­per House to­mor­row, she re­mained firm that her Gov­ern­ment would not en­ter­tain a sin­gle amend­ment from the In­de­pen­dent bench go­ing for­ward.

She was al­so asked to re­spond to In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira’s warn­ing that such an ap­proach would weak­en the pur­pose of Par­lia­ment, and whether she stood by the lan­guage she used to de­scribe the sen­a­tors on Re­pub­lic Day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made it clear that her po­si­tion had not changed.

“Of course I plan to do what I said. The Gov­ern­ment will not ac­cept a sin­gle amend­ment from those nine lu­cifer­ian mon­sters who vot­ed to pro­tect crim­i­nals who rape moth­ers, wives and daugh­ters in their own beds,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia.

“It is my opin­ion that they ex­hib­it­ed a de­mon­ic ha­tred for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. They could bray all day and night in the Sen­ate, but it wouldn’t make a dif­fer­ence to a sin­gle piece of leg­is­la­tion again.”

She con­tin­ued, “Go­ing for­ward, they will sit in that Sen­ate for days and be rel­e­gat­ed to use­less­ness. We will nev­er take amend­ments from peo­ple who vot­ed to pro­tect mur­der­ers, rapists and child mo­les­ters. If they want to cre­ate leg­is­la­tion, they should fight the elec­tions.”

The po­si­tion takes on im­me­di­ate sig­nif­i­cance with the Pro­cure­ment Bill ex­pect­ed be­fore the Up­per House af­ter be­ing passed by Gov­ern­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

The leg­is­la­tion pro­pos­es sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant changes to the pro­cure­ment frame­work, in­clud­ing ex­pand­ed ex­emp­tions cov­er­ing en­er­gy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships for pub­lic hous­ing. It al­so places lim­i­ta­tions on what the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion can do fol­low­ing a Part IV in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Gov­ern­ment has ar­gued that the amend­ments will ad­dress bot­tle­necks and im­prove the de­liv­ery of goods, ser­vices and hous­ing, while the Op­po­si­tion has warned that the changes could weak­en pro­cure­ment over­sight.

The de­bate now moves to the Sen­ate, where the In­de­pen­dent bench could pro­pose changes to the bill, but where the Prime Min­is­ter says those amend­ments will not be ac­cept­ed by her Gov­ern­ment.

Vieira has de­scribed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tion as “deeply re­gret­table,” ar­gu­ing that scruti­ny, dis­agree­ment and amend­ments are fun­da­men­tal to the func­tion­ing of Par­lia­ment.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ject­ed his con­tention that ig­nor­ing amend­ments could weak­en Par­lia­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day said leg­is­la­tion would not be weak­ened by her Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion, point­ing to Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s abil­i­ty to cast a de­cid­ing vote.

“Leg­is­la­tion would not be weak­ened at all, there is the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent who has a cast­ing vote, and he is just as In­de­pen­dent as the nine Pres­i­dent’s sen­a­tors.”

“What weak­ens Par­lia­ment is when some scum­bag pres­i­dent’s sen­a­tors try to sell their votes for per­son­al gain. My Gov­ern­ment will not buy votes,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, in an ob­vi­ous ref­er­ence to a pre­vi­ous claim that two In­de­pen­dents had sought favours for their votes on the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill (ZOSO).

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has nev­er pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence to sup­port the claim that In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors sought favours for their sup­port of the ZOSO Bill, which was de­feat­ed in Jan­u­ary, nor has she named the sen­a­tors.

Guardian Me­dia al­so asked Per­sad-Bisses­sar whether she had writ­ten to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, or in­tend­ed to speak with her, about the con­duct of the nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, giv­en her (Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s) con­cerns over their po­si­tions on na­tion­al is­sues.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­di­cat­ed she would not ap­proach Kan­ga­loo on the is­sue for now, cit­ing the re­cent death of the Pres­i­dent’s moth­er.

“Chris­tine is go­ing through a dif­fi­cult time right now with the re­cent pass­ing of her moth­er, so I pre­fer to not beat up on her be­cause of the ac­tions of those vile sen­a­tors,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said she had seen Kan­ga­loo at the Re­pub­lic Day awards and be­lieved the Pres­i­dent was still griev­ing.

“She looked very beau­ti­ful and poised at the Re­pub­lic Day awards, but I could still see the pain in her face from her moth­er’s pass­ing. I will re­spect­ful­ly give her some breath­ing space for now.”

The Pres­i­dent ap­points the nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion. Mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, have ar­gued that, be­cause of how they are ap­point­ed, they are the “Pres­i­dent’s Sen­a­tors” and not “In­de­pen­dents.”