Gail Alexan­der

Tem­po­rary Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen has been re­ferred to the Sen­ate's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee over re­marks he made about tem­po­rary In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Justin Junkere re­cent­ly.

Leader of the Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate bench, Franklin Khan, at yes­ter­day's Sen­ate ses­sion asked for Ramdeen to be sent be­fore the Priv­i­leges team. He not­ed Ramdeen's re­marks of May 11 about Junkere, who had vot­ed with Gov­ern­ment in sup­port of the con­tro­ver­sial Strate­gic Ser­vices Amend­ment Bill.

Khan claimed Ramdeen com­mit­ted con­tempt of the Sen­ate by mak­ing state­ments which were in­tend­ed to in­tim­i­date and may have in­tim­i­dat­ed Junkere in the con­duct of his work as a sen­a­tor.

He al­so said Ramdeen's re­marks re­flect­ed on the char­ac­ter and con­duct of Junkere "in such a man­ner that brought this Sen­ate in­to ridicule and odi­um."

He said that in­clud­ed seek­ing, via the me­dia and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, to im­peach Junkere in re­la­tion to his par­tic­i­pa­tion in Sen­ate pro­ceed­ings and mak­ing en­treaties to the Pres­i­dent to cen­sure Junkere for his choice of vote in the de­bate.

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo then said a pri­ma fa­cie case had been made out and re­ferred the mat­ter to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee.

Among re­marks Khan claimed Ramdeen al­leged Junkere was em­ployed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice since 2015.

Khan said an ac­tion be­comes im­prop­er where it be­came an at­tempt to in­tim­i­date or to at­tack a mem­ber on the ac­count of how he vot­ed or on ac­count of what he said in this place.

"If this Sen­ate is to op­er­ate ef­fec­tive­ly, its mem­bers must be able to speak, vote and act freely with­out in­tim­i­da­tion or the threat of in­tim­i­da­tion, co­er­cion or the threat of co­er­cion," Khan said.

"If the state­ments at­trib­uted to him (Ramdeen) are true... to ig­nore such con­duct will sig­nal to all my col­leagues on the In­de­pen­dent bench and every sen­a­tor here that we don't pos­sess those sa­cred rights of free­dom of speech and free­dom to vote.

"It's for these rea­sons Mr Ramdeen's al­leged re­flec­tions up­on then Sen­a­tor Junkere's par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Sen­ate pro­ceed­ings amount to ac­tions in­tend­ed to mo­lest, im­peach and in­tim­i­date (Junkere)."

Ramdeen didn't im­me­di­ate­ly an­swer calls yes­ter­day but Op­po­si­tion Sen­ate bench leader Wade Mark, a mem­ber of the Sen­ate's Priv­i­leges team, said he was a bit sur­prised by the mo­tion.

He said it was the first time he had seen Gov­ern­ment bring a priv­i­leges mo­tion con­cern­ing an In­de­pen­dent mem­ber. He not­ed Par­lia­ment re­cess­es next month for the sum­mer break.

In­de­pen­dent bench el­der, Sen­a­tor Dr Dhanayshar Ma­habir, said since the is­sue in­volved an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, one would have ex­pect­ed it would have em­anat­ed from the in­de­pen­dent bench but the lat­ter hadn't been mind­ed to bring any such mo­tion.

He said he had been crit­i­cised many times in and out of Par­lia­ment and had nev­er tak­en ac­tion on it. He said the In­de­pen­dent bench was rep­re­sent­ed on the Priv­i­leges team by Paul Richards.

He said the Pres­i­dent on­ly ap­points In­de­pen­dents but was in­su­lat­ed from their com­ment, for which they have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Junkere had been ap­point­ed to act in the ab­sence of In­de­pen­dent David Small on two oc­ca­sions this month, be­fore and dur­ing the SSA Bill de­bate.