Senator Attzs rejects PM’s attack on independent senators

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi have re­ject­ed crit­i­cisms from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who has ques­tioned the in­de­pen­dence of mem­bers of the Sen­ate’s in­de­pen­dent bench. They de­scribed her com­ments as un­for­tu­nate and con­cern­ing.

Speak­ing on Mon­day, ahead of yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would not be sur­prised if sen­a­tors ap­point­ed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo vot­ed against the mea­sure. The Prime Min­is­ter claimed the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors were not tru­ly in­de­pen­dent, ar­gu­ing they were ap­point­ed by a Pres­i­dent she de­scribed as a for­mer “low-lev­el PNM func­tionary.”

“First­ly, they are not in­de­pen­dent … Sec­ond­ly, they will present their usu­al va­pid and shal­low con­tri­bu­tions and then most like­ly vote with the PNM in line with their vot­ing his­to­ry,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. “Who re­al­ly cares if they sup­port or not? We will move on with our oth­er plans to pro­tect cit­i­zens.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day out­side the Par­lia­ment, Dr Attzs la­belled the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion “un­for­tu­nate”, firm­ly re­ject­ing sug­ges­tions of col­lu­sion or par­ti­san align­ment among the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

“We’re a pop­u­la­tion of 1.5 mil­lion or there­abouts, and if you have nine per­sons who in­de­pen­dent­ly ... be­cause there is no col­lu­sion, we don’t call and chat and have a What­sApp and say, ‘Well, what do you think about this?’” Attzs said. “We come and we bring our in­de­pen­dent pro­fes­sion­al per­spec­tives. I think that is some­thing that should not be frowned up­on.”

She main­tained that in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors act in the best in­ter­est of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion, in­sist­ing their con­tri­bu­tions are ground­ed in pro­fes­sion­al­ism rather than par­ty loy­al­ty.

“If any­one thinks oth­er­wise, that’s un­for­tu­nate, but we re­al­ly do try our best to bring our pro­fes­sion­al per­spec­tives to bear on the is­sues in a non-par­ti­san way, as cit­i­zens of T&T, rep­re­sent­ing the cit­i­zens of T&T,” Attzs added.

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi crit­i­cised the Prime Min­is­ter’s tone, warn­ing that her com­ments risk un­der­min­ing con­fi­dence in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions.

“Her state­ments are un­hinged. They don’t demon­strate a con­fi­dence in the democ­ra­cy and rule of law of T&T. They are far away from the tenets of law that all of us know,” Al-Rawi said.

Al-Rawi said he was trou­bled by the di­rec­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter’s rhetoric.

“I would hon­est­ly pre­fer that the Prime Min­is­ter reins her­self in, be­cause I don’t think that it bodes well,” he said. “You can be con­fi­dent in your dis­cus­sions. There is a great amount of ad­mi­ra­tion you can have for strong peo­ple. Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is a strong per­son, but this ver­sion of her doesn’t in­spire con­fi­dence for me.”

Dur­ing de­bate on the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic (Amend­ment) Bill, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne al­so fired back at the Prime Min­is­ter for her re­peat­ed crit­i­cisms aimed at in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. 

“In this democ­ra­cy, we have to be able to dis­agree with some­thing or a per­spec­tive be­ing shared, while at the same time be­ing will­ing to de­fend one’s right to say it, and that is the per­spec­tive of the PNM; that is the per­spec­tive of this bench in the Sen­ate, where we will re­spect the views of oth­ers even where we dis­agree, so to use the kind of rhetoric de­ployed by the Prime Min­is­ter, that is not vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship.”

The lat­est ex­change comes against the back­drop of a stern warn­ing is­sued last June by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark, who cau­tioned that any words or ac­tions amount­ing to ha­rass­ment, in­tim­i­da­tion, or at­tempts to shame sen­a­tors for how they vote would not be tol­er­at­ed.

“Let this serve as a clear warn­ing to all. This House, and cer­tain­ly this chair, will act firm­ly to pro­tect the priv­i­leges, rights, and im­mu­ni­ties of this Sen­ate col­lec­tive­ly and each sen­a­tor in­di­vid­u­al­ly,” Mark told the Up­per House.

Mark’s rul­ing had fol­lowed a me­dia con­fer­ence by UNC Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Kirk Meighoo, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein, who launched a scathing at­tack on in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors over a de­bate and pub­licly urged them to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s move to amend the Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion Bill.

When con­tact­ed, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not ad­dress the com­ments di­rect­ly, in­stead lament­ing that CNC3 News had to en­dure an in­ter­view with Al-Rawi.

“I am sor­ry that you had to suf­fer through an in­ter­view with Faris, please ac­cept my sym­pa­thy.”