A cou­ple of weeks ago, the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that Her Ex­cel­len­cy Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo had been “a low-lev­el PNM func­tionary” and that the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ap­point­ed by her were “bootlick­ers and brown-nosers.” These crit­i­cisms were lev­elled at them ahead of the Sen­ate de­bate on the ZOSO bill. When eight of them vot­ed against it, with on­ly Sen­a­tor Mc­Nish ab­stain­ing, the Gov­ern­ment’s bill was de­feat­ed.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s pyrrhic vic­to­ry was her feel­ing of vin­di­ca­tion for her pre-vote state­ments. How­ev­er, she made the shock­ing al­le­ga­tion that “two of the Pres­i­dent’s sen­a­tors ap­proached a se­nior Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor seek­ing per­son­al favours in ex­change for sup­port” of the bill. Right now, in the court of pub­lic opin­ion: 2 = 9 (any “in­de­pen­dent” could have asked for a bribe) and 1 = 4 (which “se­nior” Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor was ap­proached?).

What­ev­er the work­ing, the an­swer is PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­in­forced her ra­tio­nale for her prob­a­ble non-sup­port of an­oth­er term for Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo and “her” sen­a­tors on the ex­piry of her term in 2028. Could this al­so pre­cip­i­tate con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form? Af­ter the at­tempts of the Wood­ing Com­mis­sion, Hy­atali Com­mis­sion, Clarke Draft, and Ra­mad­har Com­mis­sion, stretch­ing all the way back to 1971, there must be a bet­ter sys­tem of gov­ern­ment col­lect­ing dust some­where. Where’s the po­lit­i­cal will, 55 years lat­er?

Per­haps the Prime Min­is­ter will say that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and the “in­de­pen­dents” would sab­o­tage it. How­ev­er, she could set an­oth­er trap for them by bring­ing it, en­gag­ing them, and then blam­ing them if it fails. She ei­ther adds mean­ing­ful con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form to her lega­cy or gets mas­sive po­lit­i­cal points against self­ish politi­cians. I think it is worth the ef­fort. Might she even see her­self as our first ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent?

When con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions are af­fect­ed, in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors find them­selves in the spot­light with the gov­ern­ment need­ing a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty. A gov­ern­ment’s will can be ob­struct­ed here, as it was with the fail­ure of the ZOSO bill. The Op­po­si­tion would re­ceive this as a vic­to­ry. We’ve seen this movie be­fore, though. New gov­ern­ments usu­al­ly in­her­it a pres­i­dent se­lect­ed by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment. That pres­i­dent main­tains their own sen­a­to­r­i­al picks. Are they all “crea­tures” of a pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment?

PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­placed Pres­i­dent Max Richards with Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty in her first prime min­is­te­r­i­al term. There are op­por­tu­ni­ties to push through a gov­ern­ment’s agen­da when a pres­i­dent is abroad, though. Re­cent­ly, act­ing Pres­i­dent Wade Mark ap­point­ed the Chief Jus­tice, Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, in spite of ob­jec­tions re­gard­ing the tim­ing from the Op­po­si­tion.

The in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors rub­bished the PM’s claim that two of them were for sale. That is not some­thing that any­one would ad­mit pub­licly, though. Un­less they want­ed to lose their sen­a­tor­ship, $500,000, and spend ten years in jail for cor­rup­tion. The in­de­pen­dents in­di­cat­ed that Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge had giv­en the as­sur­ance that amend­ments were wel­come. How­ev­er, AG John Je­re­mie gave no such ac­com­mo­da­tion in wind­ing up the de­bate. Leg­is­la­tion re­quir­ing a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty nev­er pass­es through the hous­es with­out re­quests for amend­ments! (That has al­ways been my ex­pe­ri­ence).

So who is the stranger to the truth? Was PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar mis­led by one of her sen­a­tors? Or have in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors bro­ken their oaths? Will these al­le­ga­tions be test­ed in the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee? Will the Pres­i­dent be pro­vid­ed with ev­i­dence to re­voke ap­point­ments? Will the Prime Min­is­ter re­lease their names?

Our Prime Min­is­ter met with Dr Ter­rance Drew, Prime Min­is­ter of St Kitts and Nevis and chair­man of Cari­com, last Fri­day. This is a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment af­ter PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned Cari­com’s re­li­a­bil­i­ty dur­ing re­cent US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions to ex­fil­trate the Maduros. This re­union is one I had hoped for. I won­der if and when we will reap the ben­e­fit of the tem­po­rary strain­ing of our re­la­tions with the rest of the Caribbean and Venezuela. In­ter­im Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez and the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion are in­volved in a cagey tran­si­tion. It is still un­cer­tain if and when our Gov­ern­ment will di­rect­ly en­gage with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.

Last week, the Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly passed a bill to lib­er­alise its en­er­gy sec­tor, which would free the US oil com­pa­nies from the yoke of PDVSA. As they re­turn, per­haps rep­re­sen­ta­tives of our Gov­ern­ment could de­vise our own re­turn to Cara­cas for diplo­ma­cy and en­er­gy, at some point. Cer­tain­ly, both Venezuela and the USA can ap­pre­ci­ate our strate­gic val­ue.

Last Tues­day and Wednes­day, ques­tions were be­ing asked about teach­ers stag­ing a sick-out. TTUTA de­nied this, al­though there were def­i­nite dips in both teacher and stu­dent at­ten­dance na­tion­al­ly on those days. Did teach­ers get sick when they saw their same old salaries but with a new, in­creased NIS de­duc­tion? They were ex­pect­ing new salaries in Jan­u­ary and their back­pay by the end of the first quar­ter (March).

Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo had rat­i­fied TTUTA’s 5 per cent, but the threat of a sick­out forced the cab­i­net to “rat­i­fy the rat­i­fi­ca­tion.” The press re­lease from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion pro­vid­ed no dates but shift­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the “ad­min­is­tra­tive and fi­nan­cial process­es of the State in con­sul­ta­tion with the Min­istry of Fi­nance.” So, it’s back to Min­is­ter Tan­coo.

I ap­peal to Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who her­self was once a teacher, to please give the teach­ers their just dues on time! To­day, we are no longer in a state of emer­gency. Will we be see­ing ac­tu­al in­dus­tri­al ac­tion from now on?