JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pene­lope Beck­les says she will write to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo over Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lan­guage about In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors.

Af­ter the Sen­ate passed the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill last week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors as “sa­tan­ic” for not sup­port­ing it.

“They are sa­tan­ic to vote to pro­tect drug traf­fick­ers who poi­son our chil­dren, to pro­tect rapists who rape moth­ers and daugh­ters in their beds, to pro­tect vi­o­lent crim­i­nals who rob and beat our el­der­ly,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so said she would not ac­cept any amend­ments pro­posed by the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill.

“Go­ing for­ward, they will sit in that Sen­ate for days and be rel­e­gat­ed to use­less­ness,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. “We will nev­er take amend­ments from peo­ple who vot­ed to pro­tect mur­der­ers, rapists and child mo­les­ters. If they want to cre­ate leg­is­la­tion, they should fight the elec­tions.”

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment, Beck­les said the Op­po­si­tion had dis­cussed the mat­ter and agreed to seek the Pres­i­dent’s in­ter­ven­tion.

“We are go­ing to write a let­ter to the Pres­i­dent. We’re go­ing to have our cau­cus and, yes, we will write. No one should be sur­prised as to what is hap­pen­ing,” Beck­les said.

She said the Prime Min­is­ter’s lan­guage could mark the be­gin­ning of a pat­tern un­der the Gov­ern­ment. Beck­les al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pledge to re­ject fu­ture amend­ments from the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, say­ing it sug­gest­ed an au­thor­i­tar­i­an ap­proach to gov­er­nance.

“They don’t re­al­ly re­spect the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, clear­ly. I mean, how could you make—if you make the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors use­less, then you are say­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion is a waste of time. I mean, we know that it is not,” she said.

“You have to have checks and bal­ances, and that is what the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors are there for, checks and bal­ances. The truth is that this gov­ern­ment wants ab­solute­ly no checks and bal­ances. They just want the free­dom to do what­ev­er they will.”

Beck­les said the coun­try could not ad­vance with­out prop­er gov­er­nance and crit­i­cised any sug­ges­tion that the Gov­ern­ment should not face checks and bal­ances. She al­so said the Op­po­si­tion would raise con­cerns about the lim­it­ed time it is giv­en to re­view leg­is­la­tion be­fore it is brought to Par­lia­ment, de­scrib­ing the prac­tice as “ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous”.

“We know that from time to time, any gov­ern­ment, you would have leg­is­la­tion that is ur­gent, de­pend­ing on what’s go­ing on in the coun­try,” she said. “But the fre­quen­cy with which they are do­ing it, and they are do­ing it for what is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant pieces of leg­is­la­tion.”

Beck­les cit­ed pro­posed leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing the age lim­its for al­co­hol and cannabis as ex­am­ples of is­sues re­quir­ing con­sul­ta­tion.

“Those are im­por­tant is­sues to the coun­try. You don’t con­sult with any­body, no­body at all. And you bring that piece of leg­is­la­tion. I mean, that is not good enough,” she said.

She ac­knowl­edged that the Gov­ern­ment has a ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment but said it should not abuse that ad­van­tage.

“They must re­spect, give greater re­spect to the Op­po­si­tion. And they sim­ply are say­ing, you know, just do it our way, how­ev­er you want, do it our way. And they def­i­nite­ly are say­ing to the Op­po­si­tion as well as to the pub­lic that they re­al­ly don’t care.”