Leader of the Op­po­si­tion bench in the Sen­ate, Dr Amery Browne, says he’s dis­gust­ed by what he called Gov­ern­ment’s re­lent­less at­tacks and at­tempts to in­tim­i­date In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

At an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence held at the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s Of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Browne said he be­lieves the crit­i­cism from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, UNCs Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer (PRO) Dr Kirk Meighoo and oth­ers is “not a one-off is­sue” but rather a strat­e­gy to suede In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment on all mat­ters. 

In his view, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is well on her way to be­com­ing a dic­ta­tor. 

Browne said, “I want to ex­press our dis­gust and dis­en­chant­ment, dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the Gov­ern­ment’s on­go­ing re­lent­less at­tacks on the In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This is clear­ly not a one-off is­sue, but a strat­e­gy on the part of the Gov­ern­ment to at­tack those im­por­tant sen­a­tors. To have start­ed your term of of­fice, Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, with this clear strat­e­gy of a con­sis­tent at­tack on In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors is in it­self a clear sign of a trend to­ward dic­ta­tor­ship.”

But, ac­cord­ing to him, the Op­po­si­tion will not stand by while fel­low col­leagues are treat­ed un­fair­ly; rather, the Op­po­si­tion will fight the Gov­ern­ment on it.

“If they sup­port the Gov­ern­ment in any mea­sure, in com­mit­tee stage, or with re­spect to a bill or mo­tion, they’re in­de­pen­dent, and their word can be trust­ed. And, if they ques­tion the Gov­ern­ment or vote against the Gov­ern­ment at any lev­el, com­mit­tee stage or in a bill or mo­tion, that means that they are not in­de­pen­dent...The Op­po­si­tion will not sit silent­ly while such con­duct is be­ing led and man­aged by the Prime Min­is­ter, the Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the UNC, sit­ting MPs on the UNC bench in the low­er house and in the Sen­ate, and oth­er ac­tivists and ad­vo­cates of their ver­sion of gov­er­nance. This Op­po­si­tion will be tak­ing the fight to the Gov­ern­ment on this is­sue as well.”

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi con­demned the Gov­ern­ment for specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira.

He said that while he was At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Vieira had se­ri­ous is­sues with laws that he pi­lot­ed, but he nev­er once com­plained about his dis­po­si­tion or ar­gu­ments in law.

In­stead, he said the PNM gov­ern­ment al­ways lis­tened to the In­de­pen­dent bench.

He said that when a gov­ern­ment con­sis­tent­ly at­tacks in­de­pen­dent of­fices, the coun­try is not head­ing in the right de­mo­c­ra­t­ic di­rec­tion.