Gail Alexan­der

The Op­po­si­tion PNM's four male Sen­a­tors showed up for yes­ter­day's Sen­ate 2012 bud­get de­bate mi­nus their usu­al Bal­isi­er ties, em­u­lat­ing PNM Leader Kei­th Row­ley. Row­ley dur­ing the Low­er House bud­get de­bate dis­card­ed the PNM's tra­di­tion­al Bal­isi­er tie for plain ties. Yes­ter­day, for the Sen­ate de­bate as well PNM Sen­a­tors Lester Hen­ry, Faris Al Rawi, Fitzger­ald Hinds and Ter­rence Deyals­ingh all wore oth­er ties, drop­ping the Bal­isi­er. Hen­ry's tie was pat­terned af­ter the T&T flag. Re­it­er­at­ing the 2012 bud­get, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, not­ing rev­enue earn­ing mea­sures, said Gov­ern­ment had re­moved the "pain" of the bud­get and placed it else­where .He said shar­ing of the wealth is an un­der­ly­ing bud­get theme.

Dook­er­an said reg­u­la­tions for Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LPG) have now been added to the rest of the en­er­gy sec­tor reg­u­la­tions. Dook­er­an said the time had come to re­view Cari­com ef­forts among gas pro­duc­ing states. But PNM's Hen­ry in the first 10 min­utes of his con­tri­bu­tion said while the bud­get was an im­prove­ment on last year's spec­u­la­to­ry mea­sures, it still yield­ed pie-in-the-sky ini­tia­tives, lack­ing sub­stance. He said even PP MPs were forced to re­sort to re­hash­ing al­leged PNM cor­rup­tion to de­flect at­ten­tion from the bud­get yes­ter­day, as Sen­a­tors be­gan us­ing the new Par­lia­ment fa­cil­i­ty, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith ad­vised Sen­a­tors against cross talk in the small­er set­ting. De­bate con­cludes to­mor­row.