Gail Alexan­der

Min­is­te­r­i­al trav­el has been can­celled in or­der for Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) MPs to at­tend to­day's Par­lia­ment de­bate of the "spy" bill and Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared for a marathon sit­ting, PP of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day. Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and Par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary Jairam Seemu­n­gal had been sched­uled to trav­el to Zurich and Mex­i­co, re­spec­tive­ly, of­fi­cials added. But this was resched­uled in favour of to­day's de­bate since the Gov­ern­ment will need all 29 of its MPs present for pas­sage of the spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty bill. The bill re­quires a three-fifth vote for pas­sage. The PP Gov­ern­ment has enough to pass the bill once all MPs are present.

On Wednes­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment wished to have the Op­po­si­tion PNM's sup­port for the bill even though the 29 mem­ber Gov­ern­ment has the re­quired ma­jor­i­ty to pass it

She said the Gov­ern­ment was will­ing to ac­com­mo­date changes and amend­ments to the bill. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy is ex­pect­ed to pi­lot the bill, fol­lowed by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley who will lead off the Op­po­si­tion PNM's re­ply, of­fi­cials added.

Gov­ern­ment speak­ers in­clude front-line min­is­ters such as Warn­er and Per­sad- Bisses­sar. Of­fi­cials said said the Gov­ern­ment–which hopes to pass the bill to­day–is pre­pared to sit late in­to tonight if nec­es­sary, and ac­cord­ing to how many speak­ers each side has.

PNM speak­ers are ex­pect­ed to in­clude for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and MPs Colm Im­bert and Don­na Cox. Man­ning came un­der fire last week from Per­sad-Bisses­sar who ac­cused him of us­ing the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency to spy on then Op­po­si­tion UNC and COP mem­bers as well as oth­er peo­ple. Pro­mot­ing the bill last week, Per­sad Bisses­sar said wire­tap­ping is an im­por­tant tool that can great­ly as­sist the po­lice in the fight against crime and pro­tect na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. She said it must be care­ful­ly reg­u­lat­ed and jus­ti­fied on the ba­sis of nec­es­sary crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence or a po­ten­tial threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. The bill was draft­ed in 2007 un­der the past PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. The Gov­ern­ment has made sev­er­al changes, in­clud­ing hav­ing on­ly one se­cu­ri­ty unit to in­ter­cept pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the pur­pose of gath­er­ing crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence and pro­tect­ing and de­fend­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said gov­ern­ments world­wide have found it nec­es­sary to em­brace the use of com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­ter­cep­tion to col­lect the vi­tal in­tel­li­gence need­ed to gain the ad­van­tage to fight do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al crime and ter­ror­ism. She said in­ter­cep­tion was a nec­es­sary evil, "but the in­ter­ests of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty must pre­vail in the clash be­tween the right to pri­va­cy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty." On the mat­ter of the right of the in­di­vid­ual to pri­va­cy, she said the Con­sti­tu­tion did not af­ford an ex­press pro­tec­tion of the right to pri­va­cy. She said: "The right of the in­di­vid­ual must be bal­anced, against the in­ter­ests of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the pub­lic in­ter­est and the eco­nom­ic well-be­ing of the coun­try," the Prime Min­is­ter said.

"When these in­ter­ests con­flict, the pub­lic in­ter­est must pre­vail where rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able.�"It is of­ten nec­es­sary that in­di­vid­ual rights are ab­ro­gat­ed to some mea­sure where there is a threat to the pub­lic good." She said the leg­is­la­tion will strike a bal­ance be­tween the need for reg­u­lat­ed wire­tap­ping in lim­it­ed cir­cum­stances as a weapon in the fight against crime and the need to pre­vent the abuse and mis­use of the pow­er to in­ter­cept pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tions by cit­i­zens.