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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Hamel-Smith in hot water

by

20140816

Act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Roodal Mooni­lal has de­scribed as "a fair­ly se­ri­ous mat­ter" a re­port that Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith may have e-mailed peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions seek­ing their en­dorse­ment for the Gov­ern­ment's con­tro­ver­sial Con­sti�tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014 to be re­ferred to a joint se­lect com­mit­tee.

Mooni­lal said he and Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) Sen­ate leader Gan­ga Singh will speak to Hamel-Smith on Mon­day. Mooni­lal is the Low­er House leader and is act­ing in the ab­sence of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, who is on va­ca­tion over­seas.Mooni­lal spoke af­ter for­mer pub­lic ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas called on Hamel-Smith to re­cuse him­self from pre­sid­ing over the Au­gust 26 de­bate on the bill if Hamel-Smith did in fact send an e-mail last Sun­day, urg­ing that the bill should be sent to a com­mit­tee.

The e-mail al­so urged that the re­cip­i­ents should make the call to the me­dia as a "mat­ter of ur­gency."Du­mas said he'd seen an e-mail from Hamel-Smith sent to a num­ber of peo­ple dat­ed Au­gust 10 and sent af­ter 4 pm. He re­frained from com­ment­ing on whether it fol­lowed that day's meet­ing of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), to which Hamel-Smith be­longs.

That COP meet­ing, ahead of Mon­day's Low­er House de­bate on the bill, had called for it to be post­poned. Dur­ing the de­bate, how­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter al­lowed a con­science vote and COP min­is­ters Win­ston Dook­er­an and Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan vot­ed against the bill, Prakash Ra­mad­har and Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas vot­ed for it, while Rodger Samuel ab­stained.The bill was passed de­spite the lack of full COP sup­port.

In the Sen­ate de­bate on Au­gust 26, the bill will re­quire the sup­port of at least one In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor for pas­sage.Du­mas said as a re­sult of the emer­gence of the e-mail, Hamel-Smith's fit­ness to con­tin­ue hold­ing the Sen­ate pres­i­den­cy will be in questi�on, de­pend­ing on his re­sponse.

Du­mas has raised the ques­tion of whe�ther it was prop­er for Hamel-Smith to take such ac­tion and–if it is in keep­ing with the prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance and the need to be im­par­tial on Sen­ate busi­ness–how sound it was for the Sen­ate's pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer to take a pub­lic par­ti­san po­si­tion on a mat­ter and lob­by over an im­pend­ing de­bate.Yes­ter­day, two for­mer Sen­ate pres­i­dents con­curred.

The T&T Guardian learned yes­ter­day that the peo­ple the pur­port­ed e-mail was sent to were not COP mem­bers and at least one of the peo­ple to whom it was sent had re­spond­ed. A fol­low-up e-mail to one of them in­clud­ed the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent's cell num­ber.It is al­so un­der­stood some con­cerned quar­ters no­ti­fied COP's Dook­er­an of the e-mails a cou­ple days ago.

On where the mat­ter is head­ing, Mooni­lal said, "I read the (e-mail) sto­ry and in a cou­ple days I, along with PP Sen­ate leader Gan­ga Singh, in­tend to hold dis­cus­sions with the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate."The Sen­ate leader may want to have dis­cus­sions on this mat­ter, giv­en the se­ri­ous con­cerns raised by Mr Du­mas' let­ter...it's a fair­ly se­ri­ous mat­ter."He said he hadn't seen see the e-mails.

Mooni­lal said, "We're look­ing at the facts, and we al­so have to hear his side of the sto­ry. But if any mem­ber is con­flict­ed in a mat­ter of (par­lia­men­tary) de­bate, the mem­ber will do one of two things: they would ei­ther in­di­cate their po­si­tion and, giv­en the na­ture of the con­flict, may al­so de­cide to re­cuse them­selves from a de­bate."

He said in the case of a par­lia­men­tary pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, it is a "much more se­ri­ous po­si­tion, giv­en the prac­ti­cal arrange­ments of the Par­lia­ment, where a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer may have a cast­ing vote in mat­ters. So if that per­son is suf­fi­cient­ly com­pro­mised or con­flict­ed, that per­son ought to re­cuse him­self from any such de­bate."Mooni­lal said he didn't want to prej­u­dice the sit­u­a­tion and the im­pend­ing talks with the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, but would gath­er all in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary to ex­am­ine the sit­u­a­tion, in­clud­ing le­gal ad­vice.

On Seep­er­sad-Bachan's call for the Sen­ate de­bate on the bill to be post­poned for a month, rather than two weeks, for fuller con­sul­ta­tion, Mooni­lal said she was in Sin­ga­pore and he hadn't a chance to speak with her."But she's made her views known and there are al­so the Gov­ern­ment's views. So we're pro­ceed­ing on Au­gust 26 and look for­ward to a live­ly de­bate and to take it to an­oth­er vote."

Du­mas: still wait­ing for re­ply

Regi­nald Du­mas said while he saw Hamel-Smith's re­port­ed re­sponse in yes­ter­day's press, "I still await a re­sponse from him that is slight­ly more in­formed, so I'll re­spond af­ter he re­sponds with more sub­stance."On his point that he didn't know which e-mails were be­ing re­ferred to and he sends out a lot, his mem­o­ry can­not be so bad to for­get what hap­pened in a few days be­fore, so I await."All he has to say is yea or nay whether he sent it out."

In yes­ter­day's news­pa­per re­port, Hamel-Smith had said he didn't "know which e-mail was in ques­tion and would not be able to com­ment on it."He'd con­firmed he was a COP mem­ber, but didn't par­tic­i­pate in any po­lit­i­cal meet­ing or de­ci­sion-mak­ing or any­thing like that, or form part of any com­mit­tees.

Hamel-Smith was re­port­ed as say­ing he was a T&T cit­i­zen and ex­am­ined the Con­sti­tu­tion like any­one else and con­firmed he had views. His views were car­ried in pre­sen­ta­tions at UWI and the Port-of-Spain Ro­tary Club on "Re-en­gi­neer­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion." He said, how­ev­er, at that time he had "no idea a bill was com­ing," but felt en­ti­tled as a cit­i­zen to ex­press his views on re­form­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion. He ques­tioned whether Du­mas thought he shouldn't ex­press his views at all.

Du­mas main­tained yes­ter­day: "His was not a view on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form as such, be­cause his mes­sage urged peo­ple to go to the me­dia with state­ments."A pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer shouldn't be in the po­lit­i­cal are­na.

"I'm al­so not in favour of tak­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill to a joint se­lect com­mit­tee, un­less that team trav­els through­out T&T to dis­cuss the mat­ter with peo­ple who can give im­par­tial views, on the runoff poll is­sue es­pe­cial­ly. But it should al­so speak of a fair­er method of vot­ing which could in­clude the runoff poll, but not be lim­it­ed to that."Al­so, the first er­ror in this was hav­ing a cab­i­net min­is­ter as chair­man of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mis­sion, and that shouldn't re­cur."

No re­ply from Hamel-Smith

Hamel-Smith has nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied send­ing the e-mail.Ques­tions sent to him by the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day re­ceived a re­ply from a Par­lia­ment of­fi­cial that the Sen­ate pres­i­dent had said it was "in­ap­pro­pri­ate for him to com­ment at this time and (he) would not be com­ment­ing on the mat­ter."

The e-mail

The e-mail mes­sage read: "I am writ­ing to re­quest your en­dorse­ment of the Con­sti�tu­tion Amend­ment Bill to be re­ferred to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment. This would al­low for all stake­hold­ers to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions and the bill to be de­bat­ed in, say, late Sep­tem­ber.

Such a de­lay will not neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the Gov­ern­ment but rather al­low it to get a broad­er cross-sec­tion of sup­port and take in­to ac­count oth­er views that might in­deed im­prove the bill. I urge you and [or­gan­i­sa­tion] to an­nounce this to the me­dia as a mat­ter of ur­gency."

For­mer Par­lia­ment of­fi­cers say no

For­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Dr Lin­da Ba­boolal said, "I don't know about oth­er par­ties, but in PNM, once we are made pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers, we have no con­nec­tion or part in what the par­ty does."We re­sign from the par­ty be­fore be­com­ing a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer and there­fore take no part in any meet­ings or make sug­ges­tions or sim­i­lar in­put, even to sug­gest to mem­bers of Par­lia­ment or oth­ers what to do. We have to re­main neu­tral in every way

"So if he was in fact sug­gest­ing or giv­ing his per­son­al po­si­tion on the out­come of the bill, I def­i­nite­ly think he com­pro­mised him­self and I would agree he would have to re­cuse him­self from the de­bate on the bill."

For­mer PNM Sen­ate pres­i­dent Dan­ny Mon­tano said, "If true, Mr Hamel-Smith has put him­self in very awk­ward po­si­tions. As far I'm aware, it had been a long-stand­ing prac­tice for pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers to re­sign from the par­ty they came from, and I did in my tenure. I dis­cussed with Mr (Patrick) Man­ning and PNM's Dr Lenny Saith at the time.

"One has no busi­ness dis­cussing such mat­ters with mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment, though one can dis­cuss mat­ters of pro­ce­dure and man­ag­ing the Par­lia­ment. In the same way, one can't have a judge in a mat­ter dis­cussing it with a min­is­ter in­volved."So Mr Hamel-Smith's in a pe­cu­liar po­si­tion. Most un­for­tu­nate."I know him and have the great­est re­spect for him as a pro­fes­sion­al col­league, but I'm not hap­py about this at all. He's put him­self in a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion."


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