Gail Alexan­der

Votes from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors Michael An­nisette and Gail Mer­hair eased Wednes­day's pas­sage in the Sen­ate of Gov­ern­ment's bill to post­pone Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

The bill to ex­tend the term of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions had re­ceived a se­vere lash­ing from the six UNC Sen­a­tors and the ma­jor­i­ty of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors de­spite in­ter­ven­tion by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning in the Sen­ate ear­li­er in the de­bate. Gov­ern­ment had re­quired the sup­port of at least one In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor for the bill to suc­ceed.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­nette Nichol­son-Al­fred did not con­tribute to the de­bate but vot­ed against the bill, as did six oth­er In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors–Dana See­ta­hal, Ramesh De­osaran, Corinne Bap­tiste-McK­night, Basharat Ali, Sub­has Ramkhelawan and He­len Dray­ton. In the vote, Gov­ern­ment's 15 votes for the bill were sup­ple­ment­ed by Mer­hair's and An­nisette's, mak­ing for 17 votes in all. Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent votes 'against' to­talled 13.

An­nisette, who spoke ahead of Mer­hair, sig­nalled from the start of his ad­dress that his sup­port might have been forth­com­ing–con­tin­gent on cer­tain sit­u­a­tions–since he pro­fessed in­ter­est more in the re­form process. He said democ­ra­cy meant more than a vote. He said he had no fear of dic­ta­tor­ship in T&T while the Sen­ate has the mem­bers that it does. He said he knew of sev­er­al states where peo­ple vote but where there was no democ­ra­cy. But An­nisette said the per­cep­tion of "dic­ta­tor­ship" wor­ried him. He warned Gov­ern­ment about a "dis­con­nect" be­tween Gov­ern­ment and what was re­al­ly tak­ing place on the "ground floor" with the pub­lic.

He said there was a cry­ing need for fun­da­men­tal changes in lo­cal gov­ern­ment–a view to which Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning said, "Yes." How­ev­er, An­nisette ex­pressed con­cerns which he said came from the "bow­els of the trade union move­ment" about the fate of cor­po­ra­tion work­ers in two mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties in the re­form process. An­nisette made it clear that that would in­flu­ence his vote. "I need an­swers and I think that will de­ter­mine what ac­tion I'll take," he added.