The sup­port of two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors – Hugh Ian Roach and Justin Junkere – last night as­sist­ed in pro­pelling Gov­ern­ment's con­tro­ver­sial Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Bill to­wards pas­sage.

The vote was the cli­max of strong de­bate on the bill over sev­er­al weeks in the Low­er House, and this week in the Up­per House again with 21 speak­ers there. Up to yes­ter­day's fi­nal stage, con­tro­ver­sy was heavy on the bill, which seeks to ex­pand the re­mit of the SSA, which can em­ploy wire­tap­ping in col­lect­ing in­tel­li­gence.

The SSA's am­bit un­der the amend­ment would ex­tend to col­lect­ing in­for­ma­tion, not on­ly on drug is­sues (as it cur­rent­ly does) but al­so on a host of of­fences list­ed as "se­ri­ous crime". This in­cludes trea­son, sedi­tion, ter­ror­ism, ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing, cor­rup­tion, mon­ey laun­der­ing and oth­er crimes.

Roach and Junkere, out of the nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, vot­ed with the Gov­ern­ment in favour of pas­sage of the bill around 9.19 pm last night. Junkere is a tem­po­rary In­de­pen­dent who was act­ing for In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor David Small, who is over­seas.

The rest of the sev­en In­de­pen­dents and six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors vot­ed against the bill.

Fi­nal vote on the bill was 17 for (15 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors plus Roach and Junkere) and 13 against (the sev­en In­de­pen­dents and six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors). The bill was sub­se­quent­ly placed be­fore the Sen­ate's com­mit­tee stage for fi­nal dis­cus­sion from 9.45 pm.

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors who vot­ed against the bill were Dr Dhanayshar Ma­habir, Tau­rel Shrikissoon, Melis­sa Ramkissoon, Sophia Chote, SC, Paul Richards, Jen­nifer Raf­foul and Stephen Creese. The In­de­pen­dents had voiced strong con­cerns about the bill.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, wind­ing up de­bate, said it was time to stop talk­ing and to take ac­tion on crime. He not­ed T&T's in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners have said they will not share in­for­ma­tion with T&T un­less there is a sin­gle en­ti­ty to han­dle it, as the is­sue of "for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers is a big is­sue for T&T".

He said the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al had ad­vised the bill didn't need a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage. He said send­ing the bill to a se­lect com­mit­tee would not work since on­ly six peo­ple serve on such teams. He al­so said peo­ple were be­fore the court fac­ing charges in the mur­der of Dana See­ta­hal SC due to the SSA's work.

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Chote, in her ad­dress, had said the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies failed mur­dered state pros­e­cu­tor See­ta­hal. Say­ing de­bate was not about what peo­ple had to "hide", she took is­sue with the im­pact of the bill on in­sti­tu­tions such as the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty and oth­ers and said the bill lacked av­enues for re­dress. (GA)

She al­so ex­pressed con­cern that threats might be made to peo­ple to re­veal in­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed on them. Chote not­ed that since Spe­cial Branch had said it hadn't known about the Day of Polic­ing, whether the SSA would have been able to im­prove on that.

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Raf­fooul al­so saw the bill was im­pos­ing a cul­ture of fear on the pop­u­la­tion and af­fect­ing hu­man rights. She said there was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the im­pact and there would be du­pli­ca­tion of ef­forts by the SSA and po­lice.

Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Wayne Sturge, call­ing for with­draw­al of the bill, ar­gued a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty was need­ed. He said the bill threat­ened jour­nal­ists whose sources would no longer be con­fi­den­tial, since the SSA would be tap­ping in­to their sources. Sturge ques­tioned if the SSA's fail­ure in drug in­ter­dic­tion was meant to ben­e­fit drug king­pins

Sev­er­al PNM Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors, in­clud­ing those who spoke yes­ter­day - Fos­ter Cum­mings and Hafeez Ali -, sought to al­lay con­cerns. Cum­mings ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of re­ject­ing the bill as it had "co­coa in the sun" and of ril­ing up the pop­u­la­tion on the bill. Yes­ter­day's de­bate took place against a back­ground of a protest - out­side of Par­lia­ment- on the bill by a group of Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) mem­bers. They in­clud­ed Ronald Hink­son, Jean Paul Pouchet and oth­ers plus ac­tivist Philip Alexan­der.