Richard Lord

Af­ter yes­ter­day's three-hour sit­ting, which de­bat­ed a pri­vate mo­tion brought by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds, the Up­per House was ad­journed to a date to be fixed.This means that both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate have been ad­journed to a date to be fixed.Act­ing Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Em­manuel George, rose at the sched­uled tea break to move the ad­journ­ment to next Tues­day. He said de­bate was ex­pect­ed to be­gin on the An­ti-Dop­ing Bill.

Hinds then in­quired about the con­tin­u­a­tion of the de­bate on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (De­fence and Po­lice Com­plaints) Bill 2013. This prompt­ed George to make a cor­rec­tion. He then moved the ad­journ­ment to a date to be fixed."Noth­ing to de­bate? Noth­ing to de­bate?" Hinds re­peat­ed as oth­er sen­a­tors left the cham­ber.Up to late yes­ter­day no an­nounce­ment had been made by the Gov­ern­ment about the re­sump­tion of sit­tings of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, which was ad­journed last Fri­day.

At that sit­ting Jack Warn­er re­signed as MP for Ch­agua­nas West. The seat has not been de­clared va­cant be­cause Warn­er's let­ter of res­ig­na­tion was to be ef­fec­tive at mid­night.Sources said yes­ter­day it would not have been pos­si­ble for the Speak­er to de­clare the seat va­cant on that date be­cause the House was not in ses­sion at mid­night.

The T&T Guardian was al­so told that it was not like­ly that the House would be called in­to ses­sion on Fri­day. It is more like­ly the House would meet next week Fri­day and at that time Mark would de­clare Warn­er's seat va­cant.It will be from that date that the 90-day time lim­it for the call­ing of a by-elec­tion will take ef­fect and not the date of Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion let­ter.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on a pri­vate mo­tion call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to reaf­firm its com­mit­ment to democ­ra­cy, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Lester Hen­ry crit­i­cised Warn­er for cer­tain breach­es as a min­is­ter when he per­son­al­ly paid for an all ex­pens­es trip to Ja­maica for his then per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Cheryl Black­man. Hen­ry said Warn­er un­der­mined the pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions by do­ing that.Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor James Lam­bert then asked: "What's wrong with that?"

Hen­ry al­so said it was "a bribe" for the same for­mer min­is­ter to "top up a pub­lic ser­vant's salary, in a ref­er­ence to Warn­er's claim he had to give mon­ey out of his own pock­et to an em­ploy­ee with­in his min­istry re­cent­ly."That is the ex­act de­f­i­n­i­tion of a bribe," Hen­ry told leg­is­la­tors.