Gail Alexan­der

There is a long es­tab­lished con­ven­tion in the Par­lia­ment that mem­bers of one cham­ber in gen­er­al do not com­ment on the go­ings-on in an­oth­er cham­ber, In­de­pen­dent bench el­der Dr Dhanayshar Ma­habir has said.

He yes­ter­day de­clined to ad­dress crit­i­cism by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who on Wednes­day ac­cused In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors of "or­gan­is­ing them­selves as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty" to ob­struct Gov­ern­ment progress on the re­cent Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (amend­ment) bill.

Sev­en of the nine In­de­pen­dents ve­toed the bill while In­de­pen­dent Hugh Roach and tem­po­rary In­de­pen­dent Justin Junkere sup­port­ed it to­wards pas­sage. Row­ley al­so took is­sue with re­cent state­ments by Ma­habir.

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment had gone to Par­lia­ment to amend the SSA bill to give se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies a bet­ter van­tage point to re­spond to crime and "...we have In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors who are free to be in­de­pen­dent but or­gan­is­ing them­selves as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty in the Par­lia­ment to ob­struct the Gov­ern­ment's progress."

On Gov­ern­ment's priv­i­leges mo­tion against tem­po­rary UNC Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen, and claims that Ma­habir said any mo­tion "should have come" from the In­de­pen­dent bench since the is­sue in­volved In­de­pen­dent Junkere, the PM had said it wasn't for Ma­habir to tell Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors what they should and shouldn't do. He said he didn't know where an In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor "would have got it from, to say it should have been done by any par­tic­u­lar per­son.."

Row­ley added if In­de­pen­dents were in­clined to raise the mat­ter, he'd have ex­pect­ed Ma­habir would have been in the fore­front of fil­ing the mo­tion.

The In­de­pen­dent bench un­der reg­u­la­tions has no leader. But Ma­habir, who is the longest serv­ing mem­ber, is re­gard­ed as an el­der and some­times does ad­min­is­tra­tive chores, but doesn't "lead" the bench since it in­volves mem­bers who are in­de­pen­dent of each oth­er.

Con­tact­ed on the PM's crit­i­cisms, Ma­habir said: "In the Par­lia­ment, the long es­tab­lished con­ven­tion of mem­bers of one cham­ber–Low­er House or Sen­ate–not com­ment­ing on the go­ings-on in the oth­er cham­ber isn't writ­ten, but is prac­tice of many years.

"Even in our cham­ber, when we have to re­fer to Hansard re­ports from the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent usu­al­ly in­forms us that we need to be on point and can­not re­fer in any ex­tend­ed way to it and to move on. Giv­en that that con­ven­tion is in ex­is­tence, and I re­spect all Par­lia­ment con­ven­tions, I can­not at all com­ment on what a mem­ber of an­oth­er cham­ber has said about the mem­bers on the In­de­pen­dent bench in the Sen­ate."

Ma­habir added, "If peo­ple wish to break with Par­lia­ment tra­di­tion, they have a right to do so and ex­er­cise free­dom of speech as man­dat­ed in the Con­sti­tu­tion.

"But I, for one, am a stick­ler for con­ven­tion...We have come to de­vel­op a cer­tain code that says in a de­bate that we're all be­ing very cour­te­ous to each oth­er.

I love Par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion, as it sets stan­dards for civ­il be­hav­iour and cre­ation of a tru­ly civ­il so­ci­ety–and be­cause I re­spect our Par­lia­men­tary con­ven­tion, I hope you un­der­stand why I will not com­ment on the state­ments by a mem­ber from the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives."