Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are force­ful­ly re­ject­ing a bomb­shell al­le­ga­tion by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that two mem­bers of their bench at­tempt­ed to seek per­son­al favours in ex­change for sup­port­ing the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill.

And Sen­a­tors An­tho­ny Vieira and Fran­cis Lewis are chal­leng­ing the Prime Min­is­ter to re­lease the names of those in­di­vid­u­als if, in fact, her ac­cu­sa­tion is true.

The leg­is­la­tion was de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate on Tues­day night, af­ter fail­ing to se­cure the sup­port of the In­de­pen­dent bench re­quired for pas­sage. When it came to a vote, the 15 Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors vot­ed in favour, 14 vot­ed against, in­clu­sive of eight of the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors and six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors, and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc Nish ab­stained.

While the Prime Min­is­ter ini­tial­ly said she was not sur­prised by the out­come, she es­ca­lat­ed her crit­i­cism yes­ter­day, launch­ing a fresh and scathing at­tack—this time mak­ing a se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion tan­ta­mount to bribery.

In a post to X ti­tled, “My Gov­ern­ment will not buy votes,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­leged, “Dur­ing the de­bate, two of the Pres­i­dent’s Sen­a­tors ap­proached a se­nior Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor seek­ing per­son­al favours in ex­change for sup­port and for se­cur­ing the re­main­ing votes need­ed for pas­sage. Those re­quests were re­ject­ed. From that mo­ment, it was clear the bill would not pass. They know who they are. They must live with that shame.”

Guardian Me­dia asked the Prime Min­is­ter who those sen­a­tors were, but she de­clined to re­veal their iden­ti­ty.

At­tempts to ob­tain clar­i­fi­ca­tion from Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Sen­ate, Sen­a­tor Dar­rell Al­la­har, on the iden­ti­ty of the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors ref­er­enced by the Prime Min­is­ter were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.

When pressed, Al­la­har de­clined to name any­one, re­spond­ing: “Why don’t you ask each of them? GML loves to re­port their va­pid com­ments in pref­er­ence to oth­ers. They know who they are.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to call each of the nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors for their re­sponse to the Prime Min­is­ter’s al­le­ga­tion.

When asked if she ap­proached any Gov­ern­ment mem­ber to ask for a favour in ex­change for her sup­port, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sophia Chote said, “First of all, I am not aware of what the Prime Min­is­ter said. And sec­ond of all, I cer­tain­ly ap­proached no one. No one ap­proached me, to be fair. I don’t know what that is about.”

Chote was asked for her opin­ion on what was the lat­est at­tack by the Prime Min­is­ter on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

“Well, if such a thing had oc­curred, I would imag­ine that it would have been spo­ken about be­fore. That is just my in­stinc­tive re­sponse. But I’ll tell you some­thing, I don’t in­tend to be dragged in­to any sort of de­bate through the me­dia about what the prime min­is­ter may or may not have said on so­cial me­dia. I have not seen the post and I have no com­ment on it, apart from to say that in an­swer to your ques­tion to me, I cer­tain­ly did not ap­proach any Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor of­fi­cial or oth­er­wise, nor did any Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial or sen­a­tor ap­proach me or oth­er­wise.”

Mean­while, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira sim­ply told Guardian Me­dia, “I think this is an at­tempt to gaslight, desta­balise and dis­cred­it.”

He added, “If there is ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing, it should be pro­duced open­ly and test­ed prop­er­ly. If there is none, then these al­le­ga­tions ought to be with­drawn and treat­ed with the con­tempt they de­serve.”

He added, “The In­de­pen­dent bench will not be bul­lied in­to com­pli­ance, nor dis­tract­ed from its con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty. We will con­tin­ue to as­sess every bill on its mer­its, to sup­port good law, to op­pose bad law, and to act al­ways in the best in­ter­ests of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The al­le­ga­tion was al­so put to Sen­a­tor Fran­cis Lewis, who said, “Ab­solute­ly not. No, I have nev­er ap­proached any Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor seek­ing any per­son­al favour.”

He said it would be an un­der­state­ment to say the Prime Min­is­ter’s al­le­ga­tion was “sur­pris­ing and dis­may­ing.”

“Any sug­ges­tion of im­prop­er con­duct is a se­ri­ous mat­ter,” Lewis said.

He added, “This ZOSO bill failed be­cause it did not com­mand a ma­jor­i­ty in the Sen­ate. And if the Prime Min­is­ter has ev­i­dence, it needs to be for­mal­ly pre­sent­ed. I mean, this is a per­son for whom I have the great­est re­gard. It needs to be for­mal­ly pre­sent­ed so it can be prop­er­ly ex­am­ined. A vague ac­cu­sa­tion made af­ter the fact doesn’t strength­en pub­lic con­fi­dence in in­sti­tu­tions.”

Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc Nish al­so quick­ly dis­missed any al­le­ga­tions of at­tempt­ing to ex­change his sup­port for a favour.

“I have asked no Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter for any favour in ex­change for my vote,” he said blunt­ly.

Asked if he was sur­prised by the lat­est ac­cu­sa­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter, Mc Nish said, “She was at­tack­ing the in­de­pen­dents be­fore. She wasn’t the on­ly one at­tack­ing the in­de­pen­dents. All the UNC sup­port­ers were at­tack­ing the in­de­pen­dents.”

He al­so sought to ad­dress re­cent ac­cu­sa­tions lev­elled against him.

“Some­body now call me, say­ing I get a con­tract in Her­itage. I said I work­ing for Her­itage since PNM was there. So, be­cause I’m a Sen­a­tor, all my clients who are gov­ern­ment-re­lat­ed bod­ies, I should leave?”

Sen­a­tors Dr De­siree Mur­ray and Ali­cia Lalite-Eti­enne de­clined to com­ment on the PM’s claim.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors Dr Mar­lene Attzs, Si­mon De la Bastide and Can­dice Jones-Sim­mons could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.

In the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment on X, she said, “This is why I warn about the fake “eat-a-food” elite. They do not care about de­cent, hard­work­ing cit­i­zens—on­ly self-in­ter­est and priv­i­lege.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “Your UNC gov­ern­ment was ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to di­lute and lim­it the state’s SOE pow­ers by in­tro­duc­ing the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion to use in­stead of an SOE. Your UNC gov­ern­ment could have sim­ply called an­oth­er SOE. Hope­ful­ly, some­one (not me), even­tu­al­ly ex­plains this to the PNM who are re­joic­ing and cel­e­brat­ing that they out­smart­ed them­selves, on­ly the PNM could do that.”