Mick­ela Pan­day

Some­times, the most im­por­tant thing hap­pen­ing in a coun­try is not one de­ci­sion. It is the pat­tern that emerges when one de­ci­sion is fol­lowed by an­oth­er and then an­oth­er.

That is why we need to stop look­ing at each con­tro­ver­sy in iso­la­tion and look at what they tell us about the way pow­er is be­ing ex­er­cised.

The State of Emer­gency end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 17. Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, the Gov­ern­ment moved to put a le­gal frame­work in place for spe­cial op­er­a­tions against se­ri­ous crime.

En­ter the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill.

Fol­low­ing wide­spread pub­lic crit­i­cism, the Prime Min­is­ter is­sued a so­cial me­dia re­sponse that spe­cial op­er­a­tions would be re­strict­ed ex­clu­sive­ly to the 26 Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-held con­stituen­cies, 70 UNC-held lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­toral dis­tricts and two To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty-held con­stituen­cies.

The ex­pla­na­tion was that Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MPs, coun­cil­lors and sup­port­ers op­posed the leg­is­la­tion. The Prime Min­is­ter said PNM con­stituen­cies were free to al­low them­selves to be “de­stroyed from with­in” and said, “I’m not both­ered.” Those are the Prime Min­is­ter’s words and they raise a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion. Can the pro­tec­tion of the State be­come con­di­tion­al on which po­lit­i­cal par­ty rep­re­sents a com­mu­ni­ty?

Gov­ern­ment is elect­ed to gov­ern the en­tire coun­try. The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect cit­i­zens does not change at a con­stituen­cy bound­ary.

Then the bill reached the Sen­ate.

The In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ques­tioned the leg­is­la­tion and pro­posed amend­ments. Those amend­ments were re­ject­ed. When the fi­nal vote came, all 15 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors vot­ed for the bill, while the six Op­po­si­tion and nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.

15-15. The bill passed on­ly af­ter Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark used his cast­ing vote to make it 16–15. That de­ci­sion de­serves scruti­ny.

There is a long­stand­ing West­min­ster con­ven­tion, as­so­ci­at­ed with Deni­son’s Rule, that a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer’s cast­ing vote should or­di­nar­i­ly pre­serve the sta­tus quo when a cham­ber is even­ly di­vid­ed. In fact, this rule has in the past been ob­served by Sen­a­tor Mark.

Yet, our own par­lia­men­tary his­to­ry shows that this is not the first time a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer has used the cast­ing vote to break a dead­lock in favour of the Gov­ern­ment of the day.

In Sep­tem­ber 2017, then-Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George used her cast­ing vote three times af­ter votes in the House were tied, each time vot­ing with the Gov­ern­ment.

Dif­fer­ent par­ty. Dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment. Dif­fer­ent pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer. But the larg­er ques­tion re­mains: are prin­ci­ples of par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure prin­ci­ples on­ly when they suit the side hold­ing pow­er? Be­cause this is where the PNM and UNC can be­gin to look re­mark­ably sim­i­lar.

They fight each oth­er for pow­er. They ac­cuse each oth­er of abus­ing it. They promise to do things dif­fer­ent­ly. But when in of­fice, the temp­ta­tion to use the ma­chin­ery of gov­ern­ment to ad­vance an agen­da and to re­gard those stand­ing in the way as the prob­lem can look very fa­mil­iar. Same kha­ki pants.

Then came the re­sponse to the In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

Af­ter they vot­ed against the bill, the Prime Min­is­ter called them “scum­bags” and “sa­tan­ic” and said her Gov­ern­ment would no longer ac­cept amend­ments from the In­de­pen­dent bench on any leg­is­la­tion.

Gov­ern­ment is en­ti­tled to re­ject an amend­ment. It is en­ti­tled to dis­agree with an In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor. That is pol­i­tics. But In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are there to scru­ti­nise leg­is­la­tion, ques­tion Gov­ern­ment and of­fer al­ter­na­tives. Dis­agree­ment is part of the par­lia­men­tary process.

And this is not the first time po­lit­i­cal dis­agree­ment has es­ca­lat­ed in­to per­son­al al­le­ga­tions. Ear­li­er this year, af­ter the Gov­ern­ment’s first ZOSO leg­is­la­tion failed in the Sen­ate, the Prime Min­is­ter al­leged that two In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors had sought per­son­al favours in con­nec­tion with their sup­port for the bill. The al­le­ga­tions were dis­put­ed and she still re­fused to name the sen­a­tors.

This is the trend: one con­tro­ver­sy fol­lows an­oth­er. At some point, we have to stop shrug­ging and say­ing, “That is just pol­i­tics.”

Rights are rarely re­moved in one clean sweep. They can be erod­ed in­cre­men­tal­ly. One new pow­er. One new re­stric­tion. One more ex­cep­tion. One more ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sure be­com­ing or­di­nary.

That is why the ques­tion can­not sim­ply be whether a par­tic­u­lar law is in­tend­ed to fight crime. Of course, crime must be fought. The ques­tion is what pow­ers are be­ing cre­at­ed, what safe­guards ac­com­pa­ny them and whether those safe­guards will still mat­ter when the Gov­ern­ment of the day is the one be­ing chal­lenged.

The fact is the UNC won 26 of the 41 par­lia­men­tary seats in 2025. But those 26 seats were won with the votes of rough­ly 29 per cent of the coun­try’s el­i­gi­ble elec­torate. Yes, a par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty is a man­date to gov­ern but it is not own­er­ship of the coun­try.

The coun­try is big­ger than the PNM. It is big­ger than the UNC. It is big­ger than any po­lit­i­cal par­ty. And while po­lit­i­cal bat­tles con­sume the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion, cit­i­zens are still wait­ing for an­swers on crime, jobs, health­care, ed­u­ca­tion, wa­ter, in­fra­struc­ture and the cost of liv­ing.

Those prob­lems do not dis­ap­pear be­cause politi­cians are fight­ing each oth­er.

Per­haps that is the ques­tion we should keep ask­ing: are we chang­ing gov­ern­ments or are we sim­ply chang­ing who gets to ex­er­cise the same old habits of pow­er? Be­cause democ­ra­cy is not test­ed when every­one agrees with you. It is test­ed when they don’t.

Mick­ela Pan­day is the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front and an at­tor­ney at law

Email:pa­tri­ot­ic.front.tt@gmail.com