"Gan­ga was wrong to break ranks!" That's the view of UNC deputy leader David Lee (Op­po­si­tion whip) af­ter col­league Op­po­si­tion MP Gan­ga Singh last Fri­day vot­ed with the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion in sup­port­ing claus­es of Gov­ern­ment's bill on en­hanced pen­sions for leg­is­la­tors and judges.

Lee said it was the first time an Op­po­si­tion MP broke ranks in this term.

Less than 24 hours af­ter Singh did so, UNC ac­tivist Capil Bis­soon wrote par­ty gen­er­al sec­re­tary Dev Tan­coo seek­ing a dis­ci­pli­nary meet­ing on the mat­ter with­in the next three months.

De­mand­ing Singh's re­moval from UNC, Bis­soon said, "Singh’s show of de­fi­ance by his de­lib­er­ate vote against the par­ty, de­spite the leader’s call to oth­er MPs, demon­strat­ed he has no re­spect for the lead­er­ship's de­ci­sions. As such, the UNC can­not al­low Singh to con­tin­ue in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives any longer—there must be con­se­quences for this ac­tion."

Singh re­ceived desk-thump­ing ap­proval from Gov­ern­ment MPs around 10 pm Fri­day when he vot­ed for the pen­sion claus­es in the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Tax Amnesty, Pen­sions, Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOIA), Na­tion­al In­sur­ance, Cen­tral Bank and Non-Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tions) Bill, 2019.

That pack­age which re­quired a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote could have been passed by Gov­ern­ment votes alone.

Ear­li­er, the Op­po­si­tion had vot­ed with Gov­ern­ment to unan­i­mous­ly pass the Tax Amnesty as­pect. The amnesty be­gins on Mon­day.

How­ev­er, the Op­po­si­tion didn't agree with the four claus­es con­cern­ing en­hanced pen­sions for the prime min­is­ter, pres­i­dent, judges, and leg­is­la­tors. Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar want­ed amend­ments. But this didn't fly.

When the vote was tak­en on the four claus­es Gov­ern­ment pro­posed, UNC MPs vot­ed "No", while Singh said, "Yes".

Op­po­si­tion MPs were silent as Gov­ern­ment MPs thumped ap­proval.

How­ev­er, Singh vot­ed against Gov­ern­ment on the next as­pect of the bill: the amend­ment to change the time of pub­lic au­thor­i­ties' re­ply on FOIA re­quests to 45 days. He left af­ter and didn't stay for the fi­nal vote on the over­all pack­age, around 1 am.

Yes­ter­day, Singh told Guardian Me­dia he is pre­pared for any con­se­quences from his ac­tion. "My con­science is clear. I'm an­chored on prin­ci­ple. The UNC must stay true to the vi­sion and prin­ci­ples by which it held Gov­ern­ment in the past if it's to re­main a true al­ter­na­tive to the present ad­min­is­tra­tion.

"The same prin­ci­ple by which I sup­port­ed the in­creased pen­sions, was my guide in vot­ing against the FOIA amend­ments. The pen­sions claus­es ad­dressed the small pen­sions to a lim­it­ed group of for­mer leg­is­la­tors and judges. I know a num­ber of re­tired MPs whose lives have be­come ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult be­cause of the small amount they re­ceive.

"It would be un­con­scionable for to­day’s leg­is­la­tor to turn away from the silent suf­fer­ing of for­mer Par­lia­men­tary col­leagues on ei­ther side. Equal­ly, it's un­con­scionable that this is be­ing done, ap­par­ent­ly, in a vac­u­um and so many of our cit­i­zens are al­so suf­fer­ing.

"In 2014 the PP Gov­ern­ment in­tro­duced sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion re­gard­ing leg­is­la­tor's pen­sions and in 2009 the Op­po­si­tion UNC sup­port­ed sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion. For me to have changed that sup­port for the sake of po­lit­i­cal one-up­man­ship would have been to sac­ri­fice the pub­lic good and to fly in the face of the very prin­ci­ple which mo­ti­vat­ed us as a Gov­ern­ment."

Ac­knowl­edg­ing some UNC sup­port­ers may have is­sues with his move, Singh said, "Peo­ple must first know what mo­ti­vat­ed ac­tion be­fore they de­cide whether it was a good or bad one. The bill might have passed with or with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port, but the con­cept of prin­ci­ple is not to sim­ply use one’s vote and voice for pol­i­tics, but for the good of a na­tion."

Lee said Singh's de­ci­sion was his alone and he was ful­ly aware of go­ing against the Op­po­si­tion. "He wasn't right to go against the Op­po­si­tion. We had a po­si­tion, it was flout­ed. The whip hadn't been re­moved. Giv­en the time in the po­lit­i­cal land­scape and the mer­its of the bill, he shouldn't have gone against the Op­po­si­tion. I don't know if he'll be dis­ci­plined. The leader and par­ty will have to con­fer. But peo­ple were fired from the PP Cab­i­net and didn't break ranks."

In 2016 Singh was re­moved as UNC whip. In 2017 he was shift­ed to the back­bench af­ter voic­ing con­cerns on UNC's in­ter­nal elec­tion. Re­cent­ly he called for Ma­yaro cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Glen Ram's re­moval.