Minus opposition support

THE SENATE yesterday adopted the Third Special Report of the Joint Select Committee appointed to consider and report on the Police Reform Bills, but not without criticism from Opposition and Independent Senators. AttorneyGeneral Glenda Morean appealed to senators not to “throw taxpayers’ money down the drain” by allowing the report to lapse with the proroguing of Parliament which begins today. However Senate Minor-ity Leader Wade Mark maintained that the way in which Government was seeking to adopt the report was wrong. Mark said he was infor-med that his UNC colleagues on the Committee, Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Gillian Lucky, signed the report, he subsequently learned this was untrue. The UNC chairman then claimed that while he was speaking with Lucky on the matter, a junior parliamentary clerk relayed the details of that private conversation to Morean. “They (Government) can proceed without us,” he declared.

Independent Senator, Professor Ramesh Deos-aran, said while he signed the report, he was saddened his motion for televised parliamentary debates did not receive similar treatment. The report was eventually adopted minus the Opposition’s support. Last week in the Lower House, Legal Affairs Minister Camille Robinson-Regis alleged that Mark, Persad-Bissessar and Lucky had given a private undertaking to sign the report but reneged on it publicly. Lucky denied the charge. Opposition Senator Arnim Smith appealed for legislation to be brought to Parliament to renew public confidence in the Police Service. AG Morean reminded Smith that this was the purpose of the Police Service Reform Bills, which the UNC has refused to support until there is constitutional reform in Trinidad and Tobago, and was optimistic that he would support the bills.

Meanwhile in debate on the Finance (Supplementary Appropriation) Bill 2003, UNC Senator Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan claimed that Government did not want to release the contents of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Consultation Four Report because it would reveal IMF criticisms of why the Government was not putting money into the Interim Revenue Stabilisation Fund. She further alleged that given the current rate of natural gas consumption in TT, “the energy wealth will be exhausted in a decade”. Last Friday during debate on the same bill in the Lower House, Prime Minister Patrick Manning dismissed UNC claims that the nation’s energy reserves would be depleted in 20 to 40 years.