Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young yes­ter­day apol­o­gised to In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Charisse Seep­er­sad for the ac­tions of the Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors dur­ing their failed Oc­to­ber mo­tion to re­move Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes.

Young was speak­ing dur­ing a mo­tion brought by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira against the Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors for their un­par­lia­men­tary con­duct.

Dur­ing that Oc­to­ber 21 mo­tion, the Op­po­si­tion called for Seep­er­sad to be omit­ted from the vote as she is the sis­ter of for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair Bliss Seep­er­sad.

The mo­tion to re­move the Pres­i­dent was trig­gered by re­ports that Seep­er­sad (Bliss) was al­leged­ly met by a se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent and then re­called the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice mer­it list which she had al­ready de­liv­ered to Pres­i­dent Weekes.

Young said the ac­tions of the Op­po­si­tion were not prop­er­ly rep­re­sent­ed on tele­vi­sion.

“Sen­a­tor Seep­er­sad, as a cit­i­zen of T&T, as a man, I apol­o­gise to you for what you had to un­fair­ly un­der­go on that day. If it were a dif­fer­ent type of pro­ceed­ing, I would have be­haved dif­fer­ent­ly and come to your de­fence be­cause what you were sub­ject­ed to could nev­er be jus­ti­fied and it was dis­taste­ful and dis­grace­ful and I apol­o­gise on their be­half be­cause they don’t have a bone of de­cen­cy in their body to ever do that to you,” Young said.

“Un­less you were here, you would have no un­der­stand­ing of the abuse, the mo­lesta­tion and the dis­grace­ful be­hav­iour that was dis­played by the whole Op­po­si­tion bench but to­day we are here to deal with the Sen­a­tors.”

Be­fore the Oc­to­ber 21 de­bate, the Op­po­si­tion re­peat­ed that the in­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors were not in­de­pen­dent but be­hold­en to the Pres­i­dent for their ap­point­ments. The Op­po­si­tion said the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, there­fore, would nev­er vote to re­move the Pres­i­dent.

Yes­ter­day, Young said that their in­ter­rup­tions and com­ments dur­ing the mo­tion were done “in the most dis­rup­tive way.”

He said that al­though all the mem­bers had copies of Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s mo­tion, the six low­er house Sen­a­tors de­mand­ed that it be read again in their pres­ence.

“These six Sen­a­tors come to the Elec­toral Col­lege and said ‘we don’t know what we’re here about, you have to read the mo­tion again’, ob­vi­ous­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to dis­rupt the sit­ting of the elec­toral col­lege,” he said.

Young said he looked on “in ut­ter amaze­ment and dis­gust” at their be­hav­iour.

“The pop­u­la­tion would nev­er un­der­stand the de­spi­ca­ble be­hav­iour we were ex­posed to on that day, which led to this mo­tion,” he said.

Young list­ed the of­fend­ing Sen­a­tors, who in­clud­ed Anil Roberts, David Nakhid, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al and Wade Mark.

“And that can­not and should not be tol­er­at­ed by a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety,” he said.