UNC accuses Independent senators of bias ahead of key Pension Bill vote

Sto­ries by Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­[email protected]

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) launched a scathing at­tack on the In­de­pen­dent Sen­ate bench yes­ter­day, not on­ly ques­tion­ing their in­de­pen­dence but in­fer­ring that the Pres­i­dent, who has close PNM ties, placed them there to thwart the gov­ern­ment.

This came one day be­fore the Sen­ate was set to de­bate the con­tro­ver­sial Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025 which will ef­fec­tive­ly dis­qual­i­fy Stu­art Young from re­ceiv­ing a prime min­is­ter’s pen­sion for hav­ing failed to hold of­fice for at least one year.

The Bill needs a three-fifth ma­jor­i­ty to pass, mean­ing the gov­ern­ment will need at least four votes from ei­ther the Op­po­si­tion or In­de­pen­dent bench­es.

Speak­ing at their par­ty head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, UNC PRO Dr Kirk Meighoo said if at least four In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors do not sup­port the bill “they will ac­tu­al­ly al­low the PNM to con­tin­ue to rape the Trea­sury, even in Op­po­si­tion.”

Dr Meighoo went as far as to sug­gest that there is no such thing as an “in­de­pen­dent” sen­a­tor.

“The Con­sti­tu­tion con­tains no such term. They are pres­i­den­tial sen­a­tors and in this case, they’ve been ap­point­ed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, a long-stand­ing and deeply em­bed­ded fig­ure with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.”

He went on to ac­cuse the Pres­i­dent of be­ing, “the most po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned head of state in the his­to­ry of our re­pub­lic.”

“Her own lengthy po­lit­i­cal ca­reer as a PNM sen­a­tor in 2001, a PNM min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in 2012, the Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs in 2015 or 2005, Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, the PNM MP for Pointe-A-Pierre in 2007, and the high­ly con­tro­ver­sial PNM elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate in 2015 is well doc­u­ment­ed. She once in­fa­mous­ly de­clared that she was spread­ing the gospel of the PNM.”

He added: “Her ex­tend­ed Gar­cia-Kan­ga­loo fam­i­ly in­cludes promi­nent PNM fig­ures such as for­mer Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia, PNM-ap­point­ed su­per-tech­no­crat Noel Gar­cia, and her hus­band Ker­wyn Gar­cia, who re­ceived mil­lions of dol­lars in state briefs un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment.”

The UNC PRO even crit­i­cised where the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors re­side, say­ing eight of them live in north Trinidad and there­fore the bench is not a re­flec­tion of so­ci­ety as a whole.

He al­so ques­tioned the in­tegri­ty of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira SC who re­ceived state briefs from the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and Si­mon de la Bastide SC for hav­ing “long-stand­ing” ties with the PNM.

Cit­ing the de­bate on amend­ments to the Chil­dren’s Life Fund, Meighoo said: “In the first work­ing sit­ting of the 13th Re­pub­li­can Par­lia­ment, on three oc­ca­sions in the com­mit­tee stage, every sin­gle one of these so-called In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors aligned with the PNM to cre­ate a 15-15 tie.

“Re­mem­ber, I said we had 16 seats, but one of them is the Pres­i­dent, so a 15-15 tie. So, the speak­er had to in­ter­vene each time to break the tie, and this re­sult­ed in a very pro­longed ses­sion for such a short and un­con­tro­ver­sial bill to help chil­dren. This una­nim­i­ty was un­usu­al be­cause the so-called in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are not sup­posed to co­or­di­nate their votes.”

Meighoo said they are not sup­posed to cau­cus and this shows just how aligned the pres­i­dent’s ap­pointees are with the op­po­si­tion PNM.

The for­mer Sen­ate bench al­so did not es­cape Meighoo’s cri­tique, as he called them “rub­ber stamps” for the then-PNM gov­ern­ment.

“On 16 oc­ca­sions, so-called in­de­pen­dent Paul Richards al­ways vot­ed with the PNM, 16 times. Sen­a­tor Vieira vot­ed with the PNM 15 of 16 times. Sen­a­tor Charisse Seep­er­sad, sis­ter of Bliss Seep­er­sad, vot­ed with the PNM 15 times.

“On 16 oc­ca­sions, Sen­a­tor Var­ma Deyals­ingh vot­ed with the PNM 14 times. Sen­a­tor Hazel Thomas (Thomp­son-Ahye), 14 times as well. Sen­a­tor Am­ri­ta De­onar­ine, 13 times. That doesn’t sound very in­de­pen­dent,” he said.

Turn­ing back to the cur­rent in­de­pen­dent bench, Meighoo brought at­ten­tion to an in­ci­dent last Fri­day where In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr De­sirée Mur­ray ob­ject­ed three times dur­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith. Twice was for rel­e­vance and once for im­pugn­ing im­prop­er mo­tives.

He’s call­ing on the nine sen­a­tors to not thwart the will of the peo­ple and be a “back­ward force.”

“Do not al­low the PNM to get away with this loop­hole, al­low­ing per­sons to col­lect over $1 mil­lion in pen­sion for just serv­ing one day, or even five sec­onds, as Colm Im­bert ar­gued when oth­er pub­lic ser­vants have to work for a min­i­mum of 10 years to re­ceive a pen­sion.

“The peo­ple are suf­fer­ing. This is op­pres­sion and in­jus­tice.”