Senators question purpose of short Upper House sitting

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Con­cerns are be­ing raised over the “mys­te­ri­ous” cir­cum­stances that led to the Gov­ern­ment abrupt­ly ad­journ­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate sit­ting in un­der an hour.

The Up­per House sat for just 50 min­utes yes­ter­day, dur­ing which Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj pi­lot­ed the Vic­tims’ Rights Bill, 2026 and out­lined its key pro­vi­sions.

Apart from Wednes­day be­ing an un­usu­al day for the Up­per House, which typ­i­cal­ly sits on Tues­days, de­bates on leg­is­la­tion usu­al­ly last for sev­er­al hours.

How­ev­er, right af­ter Min­is­ter Ma­haraj wrapped up his near 45-minute con­tri­bu­tion, Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Sen­ate, Dar­rell Al­la­har, moved that the sit­ting be ad­journed to a date to be fixed. It was not met with di­vi­sion by the Op­po­si­tion or In­de­pen­dent bench­es, and Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark ad­journed the Up­per House.

Guardian Me­dia sought an ex­pla­na­tion for this short sit­ting; how­ev­er, Sen­a­tor Al­la­har would on­ly re­spond, “No com­ment.”

But In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira said it was “dis­ap­point­ing” to re­arrange their sched­ules for a 50-minute sit­ting.

“It’s mys­te­ri­ous to us that we would be called in for just a short pe­ri­od. In my view, we could have dealt with every­thing at one sit­ting next week.”

Vieira said the on­ly ex­pla­na­tion of­fered by Al­la­har is that the Gov­ern­ment is giv­ing the rest of the Sen­a­tors time to pre­pare for the de­bate on the Bill.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed by oth­er sen­a­tors that they were, in fact, ready to de­bate yes­ter­day.

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor told Guardian Me­dia that on Tues­day, he was in­formed by Sen­a­tor Al­la­har that on­ly Min­is­ter Ma­haraj will speak, and then the sit­ting will be ad­journed.

“I wrote back im­me­di­ate­ly and said, let’s just do every­thing at the next sit­ting. Why have us come in just for his mo­tion? And then he said we feel this is the most ap­pro­pri­ate in the cir­cum­stances.”

Vieira said that while he dis­agreed with the course of ac­tion, he ap­pre­ci­at­ed the ex­tra time to pre­pare, not­ing that Sen­a­tors were giv­en just one day’s no­tice of yes­ter­day’s sit­ting.

Mean­while, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne lament­ed the mon­ey and time that were “wast­ed” for yes­ter­day’s sit­ting.

Sen­a­tor Browne told Guardian Me­dia, “The con­ven­ing of to­day’s sit­ting mere­ly for the pi­lot­ing of a Bill with no de­bate at all does not ap­pear to be a pru­dent use of the Par­lia­ment’s time.”

He added, “Cit­i­zens should bear in mind that the con­ven­ing of a Sit­ting in­curs sig­nif­i­cant Par­lia­men­tary re­sources, in­clud­ing the hu­man and ma­te­r­i­al re­sources of the var­i­ous de­part­ments of the Par­lia­ment, and the time of Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, which should al­ways be put to the most pro­duc­tive use.”

Browne said the Gov­ern­ment sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to have an ear­ly ad­journ­ment.

He de­nied it had any­thing to do with the pres­ence of Sen­a­tors Janelle John-Bates and Faris Al-Rawi, who are be­fore the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges.