Gail Alexan­der

Whether Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith will re­cuse him­self from de­bate on the Con­sti­tu­tion­al (Amend­ment) Bill 2014–or al­to­geth­er–is ex­pect­ed to be among is­sues dis­cussed when act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Roodal Mooni­lal and PP Sen­ate leader Gan­ga Singh meet with him to­day.The meet­ing will ad­dress an e-mail Hamel-Smith was re­port­ed to have is­sued urg­ing cer­tain peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions to mount a lob­by to have the bill re­ferred to a spe­cial Par­lia­men­tary JSC team for more con­sul­ta­tions.

The e-mail, which urged those peo­ple and groups to take their call to the me­dia, was re­port­ed to have been is­sued af­ter COP's Au­gust 10 Coun­cil ses­sion which sought post­pone­ment of the bill in the Low­er House. COP ranks in the Par­lia­ment were split on the vote–the for­mer COP leader and an MP for it and the cur­rent leader and an MP against, while one col­league ab­stained.

There has been no de­nial or con­fir­ma­tion from Hamel-Smith, a COP mem­ber, that he sent the e-mail. He has, how­ev­er, not­ed that he has voiced views on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, ques­tioned if peo­ple didn't want him to have views and said those views were ex­pressed be­fore the bill arose.Sev­er­al for­mer pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers of the Sen­ate have said they usu­al­ly cut ties or dis­as­so­ci­at­ed them­selves from their par­ty, main­tained an im­par­tial ap­proach and on­ly dealt with mat­ters of pro­ce­dure of the House be­fore them.

It was un­cer­tain if Hamel-Smith would re­cuse him­self from de­bate on the con­sti­tu­tion­al bill alone or oth­ers, in­clud­ing to­mor­row's sen­ate ses­sion that deals with Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit leg­is­la­tion.Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai said at last week's cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing the bill is nec­es­sary for T&T's third and fourth round eval­u­a­tions on the reg­u­la­tions.These are due by Jan­u­ary.

Asked if T&T was in dan­ger of be­ing black­list­ed for non-com­pli­ance, Howai said Gov­ern­ment had a hec­tic leg­isla­tive agen­da and want­ed to get as many bills passed in the pe­ri­od as pos­si­ble, since the 2015 Bud­get and oth­er mat­ters are ahead and will oc­cu­py much of Sep­tem­ber. He al­so said T&T had a very proac­tive team which spe­cialis­es in an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and af­fil­i­at­ed is­sues.