Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

gail.alexan­der@guardian.co.tt

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) has called up­on all par­tic­i­pants in pub­lic life to re­frain from mak­ing se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions that can­not be sub­stan­ti­at­ed or prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed, and if par­tic­u­lars of the claims can­not be pro­vid­ed, un­ver­i­fi­able ac­cu­sa­tions ought to be pub­licly with­drawn.

The as­so­ci­a­tion made its call in a state­ment yes­ter­day, weigh­ing in on the pub­lic dis­course con­cern­ing mem­bers of the Sen­ate.

This fol­lowed re­cent pub­lic state­ments made in con­nec­tion with the de­feat of the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill, 2026, in the Sen­ate on Tues­day.

The Gov­ern­ment’s bill was de­feat­ed by a lack of sup­port from in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. Mem­bers of the bench had ex­pressed con­cerns on var­i­ous as­pects of the bill and sought to rec­om­mend amend­ments.

How­ev­er, none were ac­cept­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

Fol­low­ing the bill’s de­feat, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­leged that dur­ing the de­bate, two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ap­proached a se­nior Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor seek­ing “per­son­al favours in ex­change” for sup­port­ing the bill and the re­quests were re­ject­ed. She didn’t iden­ti­fy any of the three in the al­leged sce­nario.

LATT said, “These al­le­ga­tions have been cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied by mem­bers of the In­de­pen­dent bench.”

“The mak­ing of grave ac­cu­sa­tions against par­lia­men­tar­i­ans—ac­cu­sa­tions that, if true, would con­sti­tute se­ri­ous mis­con­duct—with­out pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient par­tic­u­lars to per­mit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, in­ves­ti­ga­tion or re­sponse, is in­im­i­cal to the prop­er func­tion­ing of our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions.”

“Such al­le­ga­tions place all nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors un­der a cloud of sus­pi­cion while af­ford­ing none the op­por­tu­ni­ty to clear their name.”

It added, “If there is sub­stance to these claims, the ap­pro­pri­ate course is to pro­vide the rel­e­vant de­tails to the prop­er au­thor­i­ties so that a fair in­quiry may be con­duct­ed. If such par­tic­u­lars can­not be pro­vid­ed, the rep­e­ti­tion of un­ver­i­fi­able ac­cu­sa­tions serves on­ly to un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in our Par­lia­ment.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion re­mind­ed all par­ties that the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence is a cor­ner­stone of T&T’s le­gal sys­tem.

“Pub­lic con­dem­na­tion in the ab­sence of proof is in­con­sis­tent with the val­ues that ought to guide dis­course in a so­ci­ety gov­erned by the rule of law.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion fur­ther ex­pressed con­cern at the tenor of re­cent pub­lic com­men­tary di­rect­ed at hold­ers of con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice - in­clud­ing the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.