Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts have of­fered dif­fer­ing views on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to dis­miss the po­si­tions of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, af­ter all nine vot­ed against the Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar launched a blis­ter­ing at­tack on the In­de­pen­dent Bench fol­low­ing Thurs­day’s Sen­ate vote, de­scrib­ing the sen­a­tors as “sa­tan­ic” and ac­cus­ing them of op­pos­ing mea­sures aimed at com­bat­ing crime. She al­so de­clared that the Gov­ern­ment would no longer ac­cept amend­ments from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors on fu­ture leg­is­la­tion.

The Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill passed on­ly af­ter a 15-15 dead­lock in the Sen­ate was bro­ken by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s cast­ing vote. All 15 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors sup­port­ed the mea­sure, while the six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors and nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James said he could not sup­port the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion, ar­gu­ing that In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors have a con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty to scru­ti­nise leg­is­la­tion brought be­fore Par­lia­ment.

He said the role of the In­de­pen­dent Bench is to pro­vide an al­ter­na­tive per­spec­tive and that gov­ern­ments have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to con­sid­er those views, even when they dis­agree with them.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that the unan­i­mous re­jec­tion of the bill by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors may prompt ques­tions about the va­lid­i­ty of their col­lec­tive po­si­tion, James said this did not jus­ti­fy at­tacks on their con­sti­tu­tion­al role.

He was par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal of the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­c­la­ra­tion that the Gov­ern­ment would no longer con­sid­er amend­ments from the In­de­pen­dent Bench.

“A dis­agree­ment with the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors does not au­tho­rise, does not jus­ti­fy state­ments to the ef­fect that she will not be tak­ing their sug­ges­tions any­more in the fu­ture. That’s child­ish,” James said.

He ar­gued that a Prime Min­is­ter should be able to ac­com­mo­date dis­sent with­out re­sort­ing to per­son­al at­tacks.

“I can­not sup­port a prime min­is­ter who, be­cause she has been re­ject­ed, makes these wild ac­cu­sa­tions and wild state­ments,” he added.

James al­so stressed that In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors are ex­pect­ed to car­ry out their par­lia­men­tary re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­de­pen­dent­ly and dis­pas­sion­ate­ly, re­gard­less of whether their con­clu­sions align with the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion.

His com­ments come as sev­er­al In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors have de­fend­ed their op­po­si­tion to the leg­is­la­tion, cit­ing con­cerns over safe­guards, over­sight mech­a­nisms and the scope of pow­ers grant­ed un­der the bill.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, mean­while, of­fered a dif­fer­ent ar­gu­ment, in­ter­pret­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ap­proach as a like­ly strat­e­gy mov­ing for­ward for the Gov­ern­ment.

He sug­gest­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks may sig­nal an in­ten­tion to fo­cus on leg­is­la­tion re­quir­ing on­ly sim­ple ma­jori­ties dur­ing the re­main­der of the cur­rent par­lia­men­tary term.

He al­so point­ed to the con­sti­tu­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance of the pres­i­den­tial tran­si­tion due next year, not­ing that a new Pres­i­dent would ap­point a new slate of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors.

“For the next year she prob­a­bly in­tends to on­ly pass leg­is­la­tion based on sim­ple ma­jori­ties, al­low­ing her to gov­ern in ac­cor­dance with the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Ra­goonath said.

He added that once the Pres­i­dent’s term ex­pires, the Prime Min­is­ter could sup­port the ap­point­ment of a new Head of State, who would in turn make fu­ture ap­point­ments to the In­de­pen­dent Bench.

“Hope­ful­ly, the new pres­i­den­tial sen­a­tors would be more favourable to leg­is­la­tion that will re­quire spe­cial ma­jori­ties,” he said.

The Gov­ern­ment’s ear­li­er at­tempt to pass the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill in Jan­u­ary re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty but failed af­ter eight In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and all six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.