To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?Sen­a­tor Gail Mer­hair in­jured the pub­lic in­ter­est not for vot­ing, as an In­de­pen­dent, in sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment, but for the rea­sons she has giv­en.

An In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor is an­swer­able to no con­stituen­cy, no par­lia­men­tary whip, or to any par­ty-line en­forcer.� Ap­point­ed in the Pres­i­dent's own, non-ad­vised, wis­dom, an own-way In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor may pitch and roll in­def­i­nite­ly as a loose can­non aboard the ship of state.

En­ti­tled to vote

Sen­a­tor Mer­hair was un­ques­tion­ably en­ti­tled to vote, as she did, in favour of the bill to post­pone lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions for a fourth time.

The Prime Min­is­ter him­self had ad­vanced ar­gu­ments in sup­port of the post­pone­ment. It was open to Sen­a­tor Mer­hair to adopt those ar­gu­ments, and to en­dorse not on­ly the pol­i­cy they pro­mot­ed, but al­so the bona fides of those pro­mot­ing it. She did not do so. "I do not con­done what the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing," she said. The use of "con­done" con­veyed her recog­ni­tion that the Gov­ern­ment was do­ing some­thing wrong.

"It is un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and un­bear­able," she added, "and it brings about a cer­tain amount of anger, not on­ly with­in my­self, but with­in the peo­ple of T&T." She thus ad­mit­ted to hav­ing been her­self moved to jus­ti­fi­able anger by the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Amend­ment Bill, 2009, and she ac­knowl­edged sim­i­lar pub­lic re­spons­es.

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor then pro­ceed­ed to in­flict in­jury on the pub­lic in­ter­est. She sug­gest­ed that to with­hold a vote ef­fec­tive­ly ap­prov­ing what she saw as wrong would be to "thwart" the will of the Gov­ern­ment. For hav­ing been elect­ed, she said, the Gov­ern­ment was en­ti­tled to have its way. So she vot­ed for leg­is­la­tion that had earned her own and the pub­lic's dis­taste.

Sen­a­tor Mer­hair in­vent­ed a fic­ti­tious du­ty that bound her as an In­de­pen­dent, to let the gov­ern­ment of the day have the ben­e­fit of her own and the pub­lic's sub­stan­tial doubt. The in­jury lay in the im­pli­ca­tion that even cit­i­zens as ex­alt­ed as In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors are oblig­ed, ul­ti­mate­ly, to de­fer to the de­clared in­ter­est of the ex­ec­u­tive. Such help­less­ness in the face of ap­pre­hend­ed evil had, in fact, been learned.

Sen­a­tor Mer­hair had been taught, she said, the ad­vis­abil­i­ty of such pol­i­cy by the un­named Se­nior-Coun­sel lawyer she had con­sult­ed. And, im­me­di­ate­ly, in T&T's pub­lic af­fairs, some­thing snapped. The alarm sound­ed that peo­ple like her­self, put in po­si­tion of crit­i­cal de­ci­sion-mak­ing, are ac­tu­al­ly made of such in­sub­stan­tial stuff as read­i­ly to be­come the dan­ger­ous­ly un­clued ci­phers of those wield­ing pow­er, and of their coun­sel­lors ma­nip­u­lat­ing minds.

Such a re­al­i­sa­tion should cause Pres­i­dent Max Richards to move swift­ly to cor­rect yet an­oth­er proven bad choice he had made. If Sen­a­tor Mer­hair could prove so sus­cep­ti­ble to un­sub­tle pres­sure and self-serv­ing bad ad­vice, both the judg­ment of the ap­point­ing Pres­i­dent and the ad­vice lat­er af­ford­ed her are called in­to ques­tion.

Vot­ing in­ten­tions

Im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pect, in this con­text, is the ad­vice to In­de­pen­dents, gra­tu­itous­ly prof­fered by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Dan­ny Mon­tano, that they should not tele­graph their vot­ing in­ten­tions be­fore ar­riv­ing for de­bate. At the very least, Mr Mon­tano, whose back­ground is that of a for­mer gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor and Cab­i­net Min­is­ter, then and still now be­hold­en to ex­ec­u­tive pow­er, is em­i­nent­ly un­qual­i­fied to ad­vise In­de­pen­dents to re­strict their free­dom of speech.

As a Sen­a­tor, yoked to the PNM par­ty line, his own ca­reer has been marked by vi­o­la­tion of what he now calls the "gen­er­al prin­ci­ple not to an­tic­i­pate cer­tain events...and to come here with an open mind and an open heart." To Sen­a­tor Mer­hair's wound­ing in­jury to the pub­lic in­ter­est last week, then, Sen­a­tor Mon­tano's sug­ges­tion adds on­ly the egre­gious in­sult of hypocrisy.