GAIL ALEXAN­DER

A new Sen­ate Pres­i­dent will be elect­ed to the Sen­ate this morn­ing, af­ter Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo re­signed yes­ter­day from the post, which she had held since 2015.

A new Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor —said to be a busi­ness­man—is al­so ex­pect­ed to be sworn in this morn­ing to fill the va­can­cy in num­bers left by Kan­ga­loo’s res­ig­na­tion.

Kan­ga­loo’s res­ig­na­tion is in prepa­ra­tion for Fri­day’s elec­tion of a Pres­i­dent. She is the Gov­ern­ment’s nom­i­nee for the post.

Her res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day ar­rived ahead of Fri­day’s meet­ing of the Elec­toral Col­lege—com­pris­ing both the Up­per and Low­er Hous­es of Par­lia­ment—where a Pres­i­dent will be elect­ed.

The Op­po­si­tion UNC has nom­i­nat­ed se­nior coun­sel Is­rael Khan.

Both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment had been on a Christ­mas break since De­cem­ber 16.

With Kan­ga­loo’s res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day, the Sen­ate re­sumes work this morn­ing to deal with the new ap­point­ments fol­low­ing her de­par­ture. This, since Gov­ern­ment’s full com­ple­ment of 16 sen­a­tors will be need­ed to vote in Fri­day’s elec­tion of a Pres­i­dent.

Yes­ter­day, act­ing Clerk of the Sen­ate Bri­an Cae­sar is­sued no­tice that he had re­ceived a let­ter of res­ig­na­tion from Kan­ga­loo, in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 45(4)(c) of the Con­sti­tu­tion

“Con­se­quent­ly, pur­suant to Stand­ing Or­der 4(2)(m), an elec­tion for Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate will be held at the next Sit­ting of the Sen­ate Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 18, 2023 (to­day) be­fore the Sen­ate pro­ceeds to any oth­er busi­ness,” Cae­sar added.

The OPM’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­istry al­so con­firmed Kan­ga­loo re­signed and the Sen­ate will, at 10 am this morn­ing, elect a new Sen­ate Pres­i­dent.

Kan­ga­loo was first elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate in Sep­tem­ber 23, 2015, fol­low­ing the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion. She was again elect­ed on Au­gust 28, 2021, fol­low­ing the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Kan­ga­loo’s last ad­dress to the Sen­ate was on De­cem­ber 16, 2022, as she paid trib­ute to late sen­a­tor Dr Ro­mesh Moot­to; and al­so, lat­er de­liv­ered Christ­mas greet­ings.

With Kan­ga­loo’s res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day, PNM of­fi­cials said a new face may emerge to re­place her as Sen­ate Pres­i­dent. They not­ed that the per­son who is Sen­ate Pres­i­dent tra­di­tion­al­ly acts as Pres­i­dent of T&T when the in­cum­bent head of state is over­seas.

There was un­cer­tain­ty yes­ter­day whether it would be a tem­po­rary act­ing ap­pointee or whether Sen­ate Vice Pres­i­dent Muham­mad Yunus Ibrahim would be elect­ed Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, or if for­mer Sen­ate vice pres­i­dent Nigel De Fre­itas might be. They not­ed Ibrahim on­ly re­cent­ly be­came Sen­ate VP in March 2022.

Al­so: while De Fre­itas was Sen­ate VP from 2015, he had been ap­point­ed a Min­is­ter in Agri­cul­ture last March. Of­fi­cials said if De Fre­itas—an at­tor­ney—has to be elect­ed Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, he would have to step down from the Agri­cul­ture post.

They al­so said the per­son who will be added to the Gov­ern­ment’s Sen­ate ranks to main­tain its 16 Sen­ate po­si­tions fol­low­ing Kan­ga­loo’s res­ig­na­tion is “a busi­ness­man.”

Yes­ter­day, UNC Sen­ate leader Wade Mark ques­tioned the “se­cre­cy” of to­day’s Sen­ate meet­ing. He said the or­der pa­per for the Sen­ate was re­ceived on Mon­day but there is al­so a Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing this af­ter­noon. Mark re­in­forced the UNC’s op­po­si­tion to Kan­ga­loo for the post of Pres­i­dent.

“We main­tain that Gov­ern­ment should with­draw this nom­i­na­tion since it’s an af­front to the rule of law and the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­er - it is not too late.”

Fol­low­ing to­day’s Sen­ate sit­ting, Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee al­so meets at 1 pm. The SFC will fo­cus on the En­er­gy Min­istry and mov­ing around cer­tain sums of mon­ey - re­port­ed­ly ap­prox­i­mate­ly $800 mil­lion - for var­i­ous pur­pos­es.

PNM, UNC state­ments to Elec­toral Col­lege

Both Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion now have to sub­mit to the Elec­toral Col­lege their state­ments of sup­port for their re­spec­tive nom­i­nees - Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo (PNM) and Is­rael Khan (UNC).

This can be done from to­day un­til 24 hours be­fore Fri­day’s elec­tion. Both sides yes­ter­day con­firmed all pa­per­work is in place.

In Fri­day’s elec­tion, es­ti­mat­ed to be a two-hour long process, those present - from the Low­er and Up­per Hous­es -, will have to con­firm their pres­ence in­di­vid­u­al­ly. Nom­i­nees will be iden­ti­fied and sig­na­to­ries to their nom­i­na­tion will be an­nounced.

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive from each side will read aloud their re­spec­tive state­ments of sup­port for their nom­i­nee.

It is ex­pect­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will de­liv­er Gov­ern­ment’s state­ment on Kan­ga­loo. Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er the UNC’s state­ment on Khan. Time al­lot­ted for each state­ment is 15 min­utes.

The elec­tion will be set­tled by se­cret bal­lot vote and will be passed by sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty num­bers. Gov­ern­ment has 22 MPs and 16 Sen­a­tors, the Op­po­si­tion has 19 MPs and six Sen­a­tors, and there are al­so nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.