Gov­ern­ment will be de­cid­ing whether it will again present the Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion Bill lat­er this year, fol­low­ing Mon­day night’s de­feat of the bill due to lack of Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

“It’s un­for­tu­nate the Op­po­si­tion didn’t want to pro­tect whistle­blow­ers and the bill was de­feat­ed,” said PNM’s Camille Robin­son- Reg­is, leader of gov­ern­ment busi­ness in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives af­ter Mon­day’s de­feat in Par­lia­ment.

The con­tro­ver­sial bill to com­bat cor­rup­tion and wrong do­ing was de­signed - ac­cord­ing to Gov­ern­ment - to pro­tect peo­ple who had in­for­ma­tion to dis­close on un­eth­i­cal, im­prop­er be­hav­iour and wrong­do­ing in the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tor. It re­quired a three fifth’s ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage and there­fore Op­po­si­tion votes.

But when votes were tak­en at 8.22 pm fol­low­ing Mon­day sec­ond round of Low­er House de­bate, 22 Gov­ern­ment MPs present vot­ed for the bill and the 16 Op­po­si­tion MPs present vot­ed against it.

PNM MP Dar­ryl Smith was ab­sent as were Op­po­si­tion MPs Rod­ney Charles and Prakash Ra­mad­har.

In vot­ing, UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal said a very loud “No!” UNC MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al al­so said loud­ly, “No to po­lit­i­cal witch hunt­ing.”

UNC’s Tim Gopeesingh said, “Ab­solute­ly - no!” UNC’s Bar­ry Padarath added, “No way- no.”

Yes­ter­day PNM’s Robin­son-Reg­is said, “Un­der reg­u­la­tions, a bill can­not be re­turned to Par­lia­ment un­til six months af­ter it’s de­feat­ed. So we’ll cau­cus and see where we’ll go from here - but it’s cer­tain­ly not closed for­ev­er and out of the win­dow.”

“It’s al­so un­for­tu­nate since it was the fruition of one of our cam­paign promis­es and we did bring (a first pre­sen­ta­tion) of it soon af­ter we as­sumed of­fice in 2015 and a new ver­sion again this year,” she said.

UNC’s Mooni­lal said the Op­po­si­tion couldn’t sup­port a bill which was in­op­er­a­ble, vi­o­lat­ed peo­ple’s rights and which the Gov­ern­ment didn’t ful­ly ex­plain how it would work.

“This bill was sim­ply to le­galise ‘mac­co­ing’, a smoke­screen for po­lit­i­cal witch-hunt­ing and cre­at­ing ‘snitch­es’. Af­ter four and a half years, they can­not do any­thing with­out seek­ing to in­duce wit­ness­es. Crit­i­cal as­pects of the bill weren’t ex­plained. They used the name of this bill on­ly to cam­paign and say the Op­po­si­tion doesn’t want to sup­port a law against cor­rup­tion - which is wrong.”

“It’s a tes­ti­mo­ny to Gov­ern­ment’s lack of in­ter­est in bring­ing good law and pro­tect­ing peo­ple’s rights, that they didn’t bring a sin­gle amend­ment…we raised the is­sues.”

Mooni­lal added, “It was de­spi­ca­ble for them to ask their MP, Max­ie Cuffie to de­fend this bill- that’s tan­ta­mount to grasp­ing at straws. But trust in Gov­ern­ment is at an all-time low. So they can bring it back again, let’s see what hap­pens.”

UNC MP Gan­ga Singh added the bill was an out­dat­ed mod­el and laws over­seas re­ward­ed whistle­blow­ers and didn’t have the ret­ro­spec­tive as­pect Gov­ern­ment sug­gest­ed. He said there was a need for fur­ther con­sul­ta­tion to ob­tain a mod­el suit­able for T&T’s cul­ture.

“So it was clear Gov­ern­ment had no in­ten­tion be­yond us­ing it as a po­lit­i­cal tool for pro­pa­gan­da pur­pos­es and car­ry their cam­paign of deem­ing the Op­po­si­tion as un-co­op­er­a­tive,” he said.

De­bate on $1.67 bn

sup­ple­men­tal fi­nanc­ing

Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee is ex­pect­ed to­day to ex­am­ine sup­ple­men­tal fi­nanc­ing of an es­ti­mat­ed $1.67 bn for the 2019 Bud­get to make pay­ments in sev­er­al ar­eas. Of­fi­cials said this could in­crease the Bud­get from its $51 bn lev­el to al­most $52 bn.

Last week, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had said he would be pre­sent­ing a sup­ple­men­ta­tion of ap­pro­pri­a­tion bill to han­dle long out­stand­ing pay­ments to sup­pli­ers in­clud­ing con­trac­tors. It’s part of his mid-year re­view plan. The re­view to as­sess the Bud­get’s six-month per­for­mance will be de­liv­ered next Mon­day in Par­lia­ment.