KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

A dou­ble de­feat in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day as Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark shut down both at­tempts by the Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent bench­es to probe ac­cu­sa­tions made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The re­quest to file the mo­tions was sparked by alarm­ing com­ments made by Per­sad-Bisses­sar via her so­cial me­dia ac­count on Jan­u­ary 28, where she ac­cused two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors of want­i­ng to trade votes for per­son­al favours with re­gard to the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill 2026. The bill, which was passed in the Low­er House, was heav­i­ly de­feat­ed in the Up­per House.

Both Sen­a­tors filed mo­tions of priv­i­lege re­gard­ing im­prop­er con­duct.

In a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 1, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira sub­mit­ted a mo­tion of priv­i­lege al­leg­ing im­prop­er con­duct in ac­cor­dance with Stand­ing Or­der 30.

In the let­ter, Vieira called the al­le­ga­tions “grave and dan­ger­ous”, al­lud­ing to “bribery or cor­rup­tion”.

On Feb­ru­ary 2, the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Busi­ness in the Sen­ate, Dr Amery Browne, fol­lowed suit, al­so writ­ing to Mark.

Browne said the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments have brought the Sen­ate in­to “se­ri­ous odi­um and dis­re­pute”. 

How­ev­er, nei­ther re­quest was con­vinc­ing enough for Mark. Yes­ter­day, he told the House that af­ter care­ful­ly study­ing both sub­mis­sions, he was con­vinced that nei­ther sub­mis­sion met the thresh­old to be raised as a mat­ter of priv­i­lege.

Fol­low­ing Mark’s de­ci­sion, Vieira told Guardian Me­dia that the rul­ing was sur­pris­ing.

Vieira said, “As the thresh­old is low, one just has to make out a pri­ma fa­cie case. (The) Rul­ing is sur­pris­ing to say the least.”

Nev­er­the­less, the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments still left the Up­per House un­set­tled.

Be­fore the Sen­ate con­vened, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc­Nish, who ab­stained from the vote, said, “If the UNC-ad­min­is­tra­tion thinks it is in their best in­ter­est to con­tin­u­ous­ly at­tack the in­de­pen­dent bench, I don’t un­der­stand that strat­e­gy. It is not log­i­cal.”

Oth­er In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, who made their way to the sit­ting yes­ter­day, said that the com­ments will not stop them from per­form­ing their du­ties to the best of their abil­i­ty.

Pan­day ac­cus­es Mark of bury­ing im­por­tant mat­ter

Mean­while, Pa­tri­ot­ic Front Po­lit­i­cal Leader Mick­ela Pan­day ques­tioned if Mark was “bury­ing” the calls for probes.

Tak­ing to so­cial me­dia, Pan­day said, “To­day, the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, Wade Mark, shut down mo­tions of priv­i­lege against the Prime Min­is­ter brought by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne, rul­ing that nei­ther met the thresh­old. The pur­pose of the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee is to up­hold the ‘pow­ers and priv­i­leges’ of the House, en­sur­ing mem­bers can per­form their func­tions with­out im­prop­er in­ter­fer­ence. It ex­am­ines re­ferred mat­ters to de­ter­mine if a breach of priv­i­lege has oc­curred, in­ves­ti­gates the facts and makes rec­om­men­da­tions. Why would Pres­i­dent Mark not want to un­earth the truth of such an im­por­tant mat­ter?

“As the longest serv­ing mem­ber in the Sen­ate, Pres­i­dent Mark must know that any at­tack on sen­a­tors by un­sup­port­ed al­le­ga­tions is pri­ma fa­cie a breach of priv­i­lege.”

Pan­day added, “Pres­i­dent Wade Mark, you spent years on those Sen­ate bench­es con­demn­ing the PNM for bias and for shut­ting down de­bate. To­day, you have be­come ex­act­ly what you once crit­i­cised.”

“Right now, Trinidad and To­ba­go has two Sen­a­tors sit­ting in Par­lia­ment, de­bat­ing and vot­ing on laws that af­fect all of us, whom the Prime Min­is­ter claims were pre­pared to trade favours for their votes.

“If it is true, then our Par­lia­ment is com­pro­mised by cor­rup­tion at the high­est lev­el. If it is not true, then the Prime Min­is­ter de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­led the coun­try with a dan­ger­ous lie. There is no mid­dle ground.”