Minister of Energy Stuart Young yesterday apologised to Independent Senator Charisse Seepersad for the actions of the Opposition senators during their failed October motion to remove President Paula-Mae Weekes.
Young was speaking during a motion brought by Independent Senator Anthony Vieira against the Opposition senators for their unparliamentary conduct.
During that October 21 motion, the Opposition called for Seepersad to be omitted from the vote as she is the sister of former Police Service Commission chair Bliss Seepersad.
The motion to remove the President was triggered by reports that Seepersad (Bliss) was allegedly met by a senior Government official at the Office of the President and then recalled the Commissioner of Police merit list which she had already delivered to President Weekes.
Young said the actions of the Opposition were not properly represented on television.
“Senator Seepersad, as a citizen of T&T, as a man, I apologise to you for what you had to unfairly undergo on that day. If it were a different type of proceeding, I would have behaved differently and come to your defence because what you were subjected to could never be justified and it was distasteful and disgraceful and I apologise on their behalf because they don’t have a bone of decency in their body to ever do that to you,” Young said.
“Unless you were here, you would have no understanding of the abuse, the molestation and the disgraceful behaviour that was displayed by the whole Opposition bench but today we are here to deal with the Senators.”
Before the October 21 debate, the Opposition repeated that the independent Senators were not independent but beholden to the President for their appointments. The Opposition said the Independent Senators, therefore, would never vote to remove the President.
Yesterday, Young said that their interruptions and comments during the motion were done “in the most disruptive way.”
He said that although all the members had copies of Opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s motion, the six lower house Senators demanded that it be read again in their presence.
“These six Senators come to the Electoral College and said ‘we don’t know what we’re here about, you have to read the motion again’, obviously calculated to disrupt the sitting of the electoral college,” he said.
Young said he looked on “in utter amazement and disgust” at their behaviour.
“The population would never understand the despicable behaviour we were exposed to on that day, which led to this motion,” he said.
Young listed the offending Senators, who included Anil Roberts, David Nakhid, Jayanti Lutchmedial and Wade Mark.
“And that cannot and should not be tolerated by a democratic society,” he said.