The le­gal specifics of the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill apart, the claim of there be­ing too short a time frame to al­low for in-depth de­bate and amend­ments to the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion in­di­cat­ed quite clear­ly the in­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment not to en­gage in any ef­fort to amend the Bill. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, as has been sug­gest­ed by a few com­men­ta­tors, the plan was for the leg­is­la­tion not to get past the “eat ah food” In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and so throw blame on them. Why that be so, Bas­deo Pan­day once said, pol­i­tics has its own rea­son­ing (moral­i­ty of its own).

The means used to clinch its con­tention about the sen­a­tors was the vol­ley of un­fair and hos­tile slugs fired against them in the most vul­gar fish-mar­ket type lan­guage of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar against the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly ap­point­ed sen­a­tors.

The In­de­pen­dents con­sist of pro­fes­sion­als who were placed in the Sen­ate (1976) to raise voic­es of rea­son and, in leg­isla­tive de­bate, free of the bias of gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion; the Prime Min­is­ter has been seek­ing to re­duce them to be­ing crim­i­nal men­di­cants.

As one el­e­ment of at­tempt­ing to de­stroy the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the In­de­pen­dents, be­fore a word was ut­tered by the said sen­a­tors, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­gan her at­tack with the clear in­ten­tion to de­stroy their cred­i­bil­i­ty.

In­side the at­tack on the in­tegri­ty of the sen­a­tors, there was al­so an at­tempt at psy­cho­log­i­cal in­tim­i­da­tion: sur­ren­der to the will of the Gov­ern­ment or have your name and rep­u­ta­tion tram­pled in the po­lit­i­cal mud.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing and with far-reach­ing law-mak­ing con­se­quences was the ef­fort to in­dict the In­de­pen­dents as a means of pre­vent­ing crit­i­cal and bal­anced in­spec­tion of the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, ZOSO, and by ex­ten­sion any fu­ture leg­is­la­tion which re­quires sup­port from the In­de­pen­dents.

What has al­so been dis­taste­ful is the con­tin­ued vul­gar and di­min­ish­ing lan­guage be­ing used by the Prime Min­is­ter against those who raise a point of view dif­fer­ent from hers and those of her Gov­ern­ment. She may think of it as be­ing bold and as­sertive with the in­ten­tion to warn off all those who may con­tem­plate ar­tic­u­lat­ing against her Gov­ern­ment’s ini­tia­tives, but in such mat­ters, there is of­ten an un­planned for counter ef­fect; the re­solve of those who vow to keep stead­fast in their role as as­cribed is stiff­ened.

So, too, the con­tin­u­ing at­tacks of the Prime Min­is­ter against Her Ex­cel­len­cy Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo are not mere­ly crit­i­cism of the in­di­vid­ual, but of the con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work which al­lows the gov­ern­ment in of­fice to se­lect an in­di­vid­ual of its choice. The same has ap­plied to all oth­er gov­ern­ments which have been in pow­er to make a se­lec­tion of the in­di­vid­ual to be Pres­i­dent.

PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been a mem­ber of three gov­ern­ments, once as at­tor­ney gen­er­al and se­nior min­is­ter and twice as prime min­is­ter. Has she ever ad­vo­cat­ed for and sought a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to the process which al­lows for the ap­point­ment of the Pres­i­dent by the Gov­ern­ment in pow­er?

With re­gard to the short­ness of time for a mean­ing­ful and thor­ough de­bate and amend­ments, as con­tend­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, has to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the time of ar­rival of the Bill in the Par­lia­ment; too late for full de­bate and amend­ment is the fail­ing of the Gov­ern­ment. The ob­vi­ous con­clu­sion must be that in hav­ing the Bill de­bat­ed so close to the end of the State of Emer­gency, the plan of the Gov­ern­ment was not to fa­cil­i­tate any changes to the Bill: take it as we brought it or be open to our pro­pa­gan­da.

To the is­sue of the ob­jec­tiv­i­ty and fair com­men­tary by the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors in their deal­ings with leg­is­la­tion brought to the cham­ber by the dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments, over the last 40-plus years of cov­er­ing and ob­serv­ing the sit­tings of the Par­lia­ment, I have ex­pe­ri­enced no ob­vi­ous ev­i­dence of the In­de­pen­dents bring­ing a par­ty and or gov­ern­ment po­lit­i­cal agen­da to their de­bates on leg­is­la­tion.

They have on oc­ca­sions agreed and dis­agreed with gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion and vot­ed for and against bills brought to the Sen­ate. As a rule, when they have been crit­i­cal of as­pects of a bill, they have con­struc­tive­ly pro­posed amend­ments and been ready to de­bate them in the be­lief that ul­ti­mate­ly, leg­is­la­tion will be strength­ened by amend­ments sug­gest­ed.

For cer­tain, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has not been the on­ly prime min­is­ter and or min­is­ter of a gov­ern­ment to have charged the In­de­pen­dents for be­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly bi­ased. No one, how­ev­er, in my ex­pe­ri­ence, has been so cyn­i­cal, even venge­ful, against the In­de­pen­dents com­pared to Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic can­not, on one hand cre­ates the po­si­tions of sen­a­tors who are in­de­pen­dent of the gov­ern­ment and the op­po­si­tion, al­low the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic to se­lect such per­sons, who are not re­quired to fol­low a line giv­en to them by the Pres­i­dent, and then have them and their rep­u­ta­tions un­fair­ly crit­i­cised in such a vul­gar man­ner and with­out sub­stan­ti­a­tion.

Once again, at a crit­i­cal mo­ment in the ex­is­tence of the state of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the prac­tice of pol­i­tics has been brought in­to con­sid­er­able dis­re­pute by the politi­cians them­selves, in­clud­ing those at the top of the pile.

The out­stand­ing need is for hon­esty and qual­i­ty gov­er­nance, which are se­ri­ous­ly lack­ing in whichev­er par­ty is in gov­ern­ment and at crit­i­cal times.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.