The Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill failed to get the three-fifths spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty in the Sen­ate to pass. At the cen­tre of this was the way in which the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar launched an open at­tack against the bench be­fore and af­ter the vote. Some of these sen­a­tors took her bait and replied.

This po­lit­i­cal fight was long in com­ing. Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, whom the Prime Min­is­ter has de­scribed as a “low-lev­el PNM func­tionary”, lies at the cen­tre. The PM had choice lan­guage to de­scribe the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors and in­clud­ed se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions against two of the nine.

This lat­est con­tro­ver­sy pre-dates this Par­lia­ment.

In Jan­u­ary 2018, Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MPs David Lee and Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, to­geth­er with Con­gress of the Peo­ple MP Prakash Ra­mad­har, co-signed the nom­i­na­tion pa­pers for Paula-Mae Weekes to be­come Pres­i­dent. To­geth­er with eight Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MPs, they nom­i­nat­ed one con­sen­sus can­di­date for the pres­i­den­cy.

In Au­gust 2021, Pres­i­dent Weekes, at the re­quest of the then Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man, re­turned the PSC mer­it list that rec­om­mend­ed Gary Grif­fith to con­tin­ue as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice. Those de­tails are now sub ju­dice be­cause the judge re­cent­ly re­served judg­ment un­til Ju­ly 6. One of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to­day was a mem­ber of that Com­mis­sion.

Nev­er­the­less, the UNC op­po­si­tion filed im­peach­ment pa­pers against Weekes for her han­dling of this mat­ter and the Elec­toral Col­lege was con­vened on Oc­to­ber 21, 2021, to dis­cuss her im­peach­ment. The two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty need­ed to con­vene a tri­bunal to in­ves­ti­gate the Pres­i­dent was not se­cured.

Af­ter this, in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira launched a broad­side at­tack on the UNC op­po­si­tion in a mo­tion on the Code of Con­duct for Sen­a­tors on No­vem­ber 23, 2021. He said:

“Sec­ond­ly, this Mo­tion was avoid­able. When Ria Taitt sought my views re­gard­ing the tu­mul­tuous sit­ting of the Elec­toral Col­lege—mem­o­rable for all the wrong rea­sons—I was an­gry. In fact, I was fu­ri­ous, but I had not com­mit­ted to tak­ing this step. Re­solve came af­ter the Op­po­si­tion noise ma­chine be­gan heap­ing in­sult on­to in­jury.” (Hansard, Sen­ate, No­vem­ber 23, 2021, p. 18).

He filed the mo­tion on­ly af­ter be­ing crit­i­cised and sub­se­quent­ly de­scribed the in­de­pen­dent bench:

“Third­ly, it needs to be re­mem­bered that, un­like Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors do not com­prise a par­ty. We are nine sep­a­rate and dis­tinct per­sons. We do not cau­cus. We are not a team. We stand alone. So when caught in the crosshairs of po­lit­i­cal par­ties and par­ti­san in­ter­est groups, save for our im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly and clos­est friends, there are not many we can count on for sup­port. We suf­fer, we take our blows alone.” (p. 18).

He did not un­der­stand in 2021 that the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are no dif­fer­ent to any oth­er sen­a­tor. They take the same oath. They are all politi­cians to­geth­er who can vote for or against leg­is­la­tion or ab­stain if they wish. There is no word­ing in the Con­sti­tu­tion that de­scribes this bench as “in­de­pen­dent”, yet he thinks of the bench as a zone of spe­cial op­er­a­tion. It is not. Al­so, why do they need a con­venor if they are “nine sep­a­rate and dis­tinct per­sons?”

His de­pic­tion of the in­de­pen­dent bench in 2021 seems to have car­ried over in­to this Par­lia­ment now that the UNC is in gov­ern­ment. That 2021 mo­tion should have been brought by a PNM gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor to tar­get UNC op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors about their con­duct in the Elec­toral Col­lege. In­stead, he put the in­de­pen­dent bench in the line of fire.

In 2023, when the Dr Kei­th Row­ley PNM gov­ern­ment made their sec­ond nom­i­na­tion to the pres­i­den­cy, they put for­ward then Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo. That nom­i­na­tion was re­ject­ed by the UNC op­po­si­tion over what her pres­i­den­cy would look like. The UNC nom­i­nat­ed crim­i­nal bar at­tor­ney Is­rael Khan, SC, for the po­si­tion. Kan­ga­loo won the bal­lot.

Row­ley’s suc­ces­sion plan would be ad­ju­di­cat­ed by her as a par­tic­u­lar pres­i­den­tial in­ter­pre­ta­tion of sec­tion 76(1)(a) of the Con­sti­tu­tion was re­quired.

In April 2025, the en­tire plan fell apart. The UNC re­turned to gov­ern­ment. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was nev­er ex­pect­ed to re­turn to pow­er. Now she has tak­en off the gloves to fight both the Pres­i­dent and the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

She has con­vert­ed this fight against the Pres­i­dent and the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors in­to her ver­sion of class strug­gle by paint­ing it as elites ver­sus the mass­es over crime.

In 2000 and 2001, then Pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son open­ly de­fied Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day by blunt­ly re­fus­ing to act on his ad­vice as man­dat­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion. Notwith­stand­ing that pres­i­den­tial con­duct, the sys­tem of gov­ern­ment sur­vived. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has nev­er court­ed the ur­ban and cor­po­rate elites in the way that Pan­day did, which made him vul­ner­a­ble to them. They even­tu­al­ly brought him down.

This is a dif­fer­ent movie.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.