SENATE ABUSE

The Senate, which normally sits once a week, sat yesterday and is due to sit today and tomorrow. The House of Representatives is due to convene on Friday.

Soon after the start of yesterday’s 10.30 am Senate sitting, Opposition and Independent Senators voted against two procedural motions which would call for two pieces of legislation to be dealt with today and tomorrow.

They also protested the circulation of what they said were 200 amendments to legislation to reform the State’s regulation of motor vehicles, amendments which were yesterday due to be dealt with during that legislation’s committee stage.

The Government, in response, said the debate would not be rushed and queried whether the Opposition and Independents were unwilling to work.

Senate President Raziah Ahmed noted yesterday marked the third day in which the committee stage of the motor vehicle legislation was being taken and assured the proceedings would not be rushed and the legislation would be examined clause by clause, as is the normal practice.

Government Whip Ganga Singh, at the start of the sitting, called on the Senate to approve a motion to allow the Senate to today deal with the State Land (Regularisation of Tenure) (Mis­cel­laneous Amendments) Bill, 2015, which had been passed at the House of Representatives last Wednesday.

“I beg to move that the next stage of the bill be taken at a sitting of the Senate to be held on Tuesday June 9, 2015,” Singh said.

PNM Senator Faris Al-Rawi intervened, saying, “Sorry Madam President, if I may seek your guidance. The honourable member just begged to move that that bill just announced be taken tomorrow (Tuesday). If so may I register strong objection to that position and ask for it to be put to a vote?”

Ahmed put the matter to a vote with a division resulting in 12 for, seven against, with the Opposition Senators present voting against alongside Independents Helen Drayton; Anthony Vieira and David Small, who were the only Independents present at that time.

Moments later, another division was called for when Singh moved that the Finance (Variation of Appropriation) (Financial Year 2015) Bill, 2015 legislation, passed last Saturday, be debated tomorrow. The results were the same.

Then, when the committee stage re-opened for the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Bill 2014, Drayton protested.

“We have just received a document with over 200 amendments with a bill that contains 272 clauses and appendices,” Drayton said. “We have not had a chance to study these amendments and I wish to register my strongest objection to this abuse that is taking place.”

The Government Whip replied, “This bill has been in committee stage for an extensive period. There have been no amendments circulated by anyone. The Attorney General (Garvin Nicholas) — because of the kind of poor drafting that was taking place — undertook the responsibility of going through this bill extensively in light of the recommendations made by the Independent Senators and, therefore, it is as a result of that intensive exercise that you have this being circulated.”

Drayton replied, “This is an important piece of legislation that affects every single citizen and we are now being asked at the last minute to look at over 200 amendments. This cannot be right and it cannot be in the interest of good legislation or the people of Trinidad and Tobago.”

The Attorney General said, “To begin with, there are not over 200 amendments as 136 is much less. Secondly, these circulated amendments, many of them actually just deal with spelling corrections and punctuation and the lot. They are not substantive amendments. Thirdly, the amendments circulated are there to assist in the debate on the floor as we go through clause-by-clause so that members can follow the amendments based on what has been discussed inside and outside of the Senate.”

Nicholas continued, “There is no oppression. In fact, the idea of circulating the amendments is actually to assist rather than to oppress. We worked up to late last night and as such could not get the amendments circulated prior.”

The amendments were not distributed to members of the media or posted on the Parliament website. Such amendments are routinely not circulated to the public at large, looking on at debates. Drayton said her count of “over 200” included sub-clauses.
The Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Bill 2014 was debated at the House of Representatives on four occasions from January 30 to March 20. Prior to yesterday, it was considered by the Senate three times from March 31.
The Finance (Variation of Appro­priation) (Financial Year 2015) Bill, 2015, is six pages long. The State Land (Regularisation of Tenure) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill, 2015, runs for 23 pages.

Independent Senator Anthony Vieira said, “I very much appreciate the hard work being done by the Attorney General. I understand the pressures he is under. But this is very important legislation, it will affect the average citizen on a day-to-day basis. The legislation contains over 200 clauses, it should not be rushed. The heavy legislative agenda we are coping with everyday, two bills going back weeks, means it is impossible to do justice to this legislation. I am concerned that we put something on the books we may be embarrassed about in time to come.”

Opposition Whip Camille Robinson-Regis said there had been concern at a prior sitting over the “piecemeal” approach to reviewing the legislation. She said concerns were raised even while the legislation was being looked at clause by clause.
“We have been at this legislation for quite a long time and we have only done just about 50 clauses out of over 200 clauses,” Robinson-Regis said. “A comma can make a difference in how a piece of legislation is interpreted, how a clause is interpreted. It is not that anybody wants to keep back the Government’s legislative agenda, but this is heavy legislation that is going to affect nearly everybody in Trinidad and Tobago and we cannot sit here and let the Government apparently ride roughshod over us. We are not here to just pass legislation willy- nilly.”

None of the objectors posed a formal motion for ruling by the Senate President. However, Ahmed said, “This being committee stage, the debate has been completed, it is very feasible that we have already become very intimately familiar with the bill. The rationale for the committee stage is really a clause-by-clause examination to accommodate changes that we would have already contemplated for several weeks. From my position I am not seeing a difficulty. There will be no rush through the committee stage which will allow opportunity to further ventilate issues.”

Small then said, “I want to put on the record my concerns also. I’ve looked at this bill several times and every time I see things that jump out at me.” He said he regarded some aspects of the bill as being fundamentally flawed, but gave no details. “I have no plans to stymie the Government,” the Senator said. “We have several bits of heavy legislation that are currently on our plates.”

Singh said every senator would be given an opportunity to participate and reminded senators it was not the duty of the Senate to anticipate legislation.

“We are aware that there is a heavy burden on us this week as we will try to adjust as we see fit,” Singh said. “But all members knew that today (yesterday) was the committee stage for this particular bill.” Robinson-Regis said the amendments were circulated too late and further said the legislation should have been sent to a special parliament committee.

The committee stage continued. Al-Rawi, at one point of the proceedings, said, “I have been reading three bills literally at the same time.”

Independent Senator Victor Wheeler was granted a leave of absence from the sitting due to illness.