Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds had his last hur­rah in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, as his ap­point­ment was re­voked by Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona at mid­night.This was one of the shock­ing de­vel­op­ments yes­ter­day, as Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley shook up things by nam­ing three new sen­a­tors, end­ing more than two weeks of pub­lic spec­u­la­tion on who would re­place Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, who was elect­ed MP for St Joseph in the No­vem­ber 4 by-elec­tion, and be the par­ty's oth­er new rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Up­per House.

The Sun­day Guardian had ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son would be re­placed yes­ter­day, so there was no sur­prise when this was con­firmed.But in an­oth­er shock­ing move, Row­ley not on­ly re­placed Hinds, but al­so broke with the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) 57-year his­to­ry by nam­ing the de­feat­ed can­di­date in the Ju­ly 29 Ch­agua­nas West by-elec­tion, Avinash Singh, a new sen­a­tor.

The oth­er sen­a­tors named were for­mer TV6 news an­chor Di­ane Baldeo-Chadeesingh, a po­lit­i­cal neo­phyte, and for­mer min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.An Op­po­si­tion re­lease said yes­ter­day that Row­ley had asked Car­mona to re­voke the sen­a­to­r­i­al ap­point­ments of Beck­les-Robin­son and Hinds with ef­fect from mid­night yes­ter­day.Row­ley will hold a news con­fer­ence at his Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice this morn­ing to ex­plain the changes.

Dur­ing the sit­ting, gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors, in cross-talk, spoke about the re­vo­ca­tion of Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors' posts.While Hinds was ask­ing sev­er­al sup­ple­men­tal ques­tions on the $6 mil­lion which the Gov­ern­ment paid to re­move a firetruck which slipped off the road in Blan­chisseuse in No­vem­ber 2012, Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj shout­ed to Hinds: "This is your last hur­rah!"Hinds smiled.

Row­ley met with Beck­les-Robin­son on Mon­day af­ter­noon at Bal­isi­er House, where he told her of the move to re­voke her ap­point­ment. Hinds spoke with re­porters about his re­moval be­fore the sit­ting yes­ter­day. He said he was not sur­prised, hav­ing spo­ken about it with the lead­er­ship of the par­ty pre­vi­ous­ly.

Hinds said the move was "not a bad thing and I agreed with my leader." He al­so said it was part of keep­ing "an eye on the fu­ture blood, new per­sons, and it is with great en­thu­si­asm and plea­sure that I would be will­ing and quite hap­py to give way to new blood as we pre­pare for gov­ern­ment in 2015." Hinds al­so hint­ed at a new role in the par­ty. He did not elab­o­rate, but said the lead­er­ship has "as­signed some par­ty re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to me, which I take with great en­thu­si­asm."

Beck­les-Robin­son was seen chat­ting with many gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors be­fore the start of yes­ter­day's sit­ting. Beck­les-Robin­son, who once fell from grace with for­mer PNM leader Patrick Man­ning, has al­so had is­sues with Row­ley, a source said yes­ter­day. In a farewell state­ment in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Beck­les-Robin­son said she was thank­ful to the Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion Leader and the staff of the Sen­ate for mak­ing her stay one which she "thor­ough­ly en­joyed."

"As leader of Op­po­si­tion Busi­ness in the Sen­ate, I am quite sat­is­fied that I have done my best and I will con­tin­ue to do my best in the in­ter­est of my par­ty, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment," she said in her last ap­pear­ance in the Sen­ate cham­ber. PNM PRO Faris Al-Rawi al­so hint­ed that Row­ley's move was a strate­gic one with fo­cus on 2015 yes­ter­day. "The PNM's po­si­tion is very sim­ple. We want to win the next elec­tion, 2015 is up­on us," he told re­porters in the Sen­ate.

Main­tain­ing the move was not to sti­fle any­one's am­bi­tion to the of­fice of po­lit­i­cal leader, in ref­er­ence to Beck­les-Robin­son's as­pi­ra­tions to the par­ty lead­er­ship, Al-Rawi said, "It is to en­cour­age growth in the PNM. It is to say that we have tal­ent, we have peo­ple who are al­ready ripe to face the elec­torate and I think that Sen­a­tor Hinds fits that bill so to does Sen­a­tor Beck­les." (With re­port­ing by Geisha Kow­lessar)