Gail Alexan­der

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ought not di­vulge to the me­dia how they will vote in par­lia­men­tary mat­ters be­fore a de­bate, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Dan­ny Mon­tano has sug­gest­ed. He said he was mak­ing the sug­ges­tion in light of ar­ti­cles ear­li­er this week in which sev­er­al In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors spoke about their po­si­tions on the bill to post­pone lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions. Af­ter the vote on the bill which was passed late on Wednes­day night, Mon­tano told sen­a­tors that he had not­ed ar­ti­cles in the press which had con­tact­ed In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ask­ing them how they would vote.

"I'd like to sug­gest to mem­bers of the In­de­pen­dent bench when we have a sit­u­a­tion like that, we ought not to dis­cuss to the me­dia how per­sons in­tend to vote–it is not a rul­ing, it is a sug­ges­tion...I'm ask­ing you to," Mon­tano said. "There is a gen­er­al prin­ci­ple in Par­lia­ment not to an­tic­i­pate cer­tain events as they come about. We're al­so ex­pect­ed in Sen­ate to de­bate, not to make speech­es." Mon­tano said this was clear­ly demon­strat­ed by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sub­has Ramkhelawan in Wednes­day's de­bate when he said the pur­pose of de­bate was to at­tempt to con­vince oth­er sen­a­tors of their po­si­tion.

"There­fore, we're all ex­pect­ed to come here with an open mind and open heart," Mon­tano said, not­ing the lines of the Sen­ate's open­ing prayer which echoes sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments. Mon­tano said sen­a­tors were ex­pect­ed to de­lib­er­ate and con­sid­er things as they pro­ceed. He al­so not­ed that in de­bate, Gov­ern­ment comes with a po­si­tion on a bill and its po­si­tion could shift and amend­ments made. In that spir­it, Mon­tano said it was in­ap­pro­pri­ate to dis­cuss with the me­dia what their po­si­tions might be on a par­tic­u­lar mat­ter be­fore the is­sue comes to the Sen­ate.

In the same way, Mon­tano said, min­is­ters who have ques­tions for oral and writ­ten an­swers were ex­pect­ed not to pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion to the me­dia be­fore it was read in the Up­per House. If they do so, Mon­tano said, this was dis­cour­te­ous to the Sen­ate. He said the same ap­plied to mat­ters that the me­dia may call sen­a­tors on ahead of de­bate on those is­sues. "I ask you to con­sid­er this," Mon­tano added. Yes­ter­day, sev­er­al sen­a­tors in­clud­ing In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal took is­sue with Mon­tano's "sug­ges­tion," in­clud­ing ve­to­ing it.