KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pene­lope Beck­les says there will be changes to the Op­po­si­tion Sen­ate bench when Par­lia­ment re­con­venes to­mor­row.

The an­nounce­ment comes just over a month af­ter con­tro­ver­sy en­gulfed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), fol­low­ing the re­moval of Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates from the Pub­lic Ac­counts and Ad­min­is­tra­tion Com­mit­tee (PAAC) amid al­le­ga­tions she helped in edit­ing a wit­ness state­ment sub­mit­ted by for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

John-Bates of­fered her res­ig­na­tion to Beck­les, who is yet to make a de­ci­sion on that. How­ev­er, John-Bates and Faris Al-Rawi avoid­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee, af­ter a mo­tion seek­ing to re­fer them to the com­mit­tee lapsed. The is­sue arose af­ter it was re­vealed Al-Rawi was al­so in­volved in prepar­ing the wit­ness state­ment.

Fol­low­ing crit­i­cism for fail­ing to act on John-Bates, Beck­les, at a me­dia con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, said she would now reshuf­fle the Op­po­si­tion Sen­ate bench.

The PNM sen­a­tors are cur­rent­ly John-Bates, Al-Rawi, Dr Amery Browne, Fos­ter Cum­mings, Vish­nu Dhan­paul and Melanie Roberts-Radg­man.

While re­main­ing tight-lipped on John-Bates and Al-Rawi, Beck­les gave an idea of what she weighed in the mat­ter.

“I have con­sid­ered the fact that there has been a mat­ter be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee. And whilst there are those who ar­gued about me tak­ing time, I un­der­stand the im­por­tance of the ju­di­cial process and jus­tice, nat­ur­al jus­tice in par­tic­u­lar, and I know that it was very im­por­tant to en­sure that nat­ur­al jus­tice took place. As a lawyer my­self for 30 years, I un­der­stand the im­por­tance of the right to be heard.”

She said she al­so in­tends to make pe­ri­od­ic ro­ta­tions a reg­u­lar fea­ture of her Sen­ate man­age­ment.

As spec­u­la­tion grows over who may be re­moved, PNM stal­wart Ash­ton Ford yes­ter­day said Al-Rawi should be re­placed by San­jiv Bood­hu. While ac­knowl­edg­ing John-Bates had made a mis­take, Ford de­scribed her as a young and promis­ing sen­a­tor.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said he too be­lieves Bood­hu would be a good fit for the Sen­ate bench, while Browne and Roberts-Radg­man should al­so re­main sen­a­tors.

“It is very im­por­tant that those se­lect­ed are aware of what is ex­pect­ed of them very ear­ly,” Mo­hammed said.

“I think San­jiv Bood­hu could make a good con­tri­bu­tion to the Sen­ate. The oth­er three should be a mix­ture of new faces, youth and ex­pe­ri­ence. There’s noth­ing wrong with go­ing back in­to the par­ty and seek­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of some of its stal­warts. That makes a good bal­ance, es­pe­cial­ly when one is seek­ing to po­si­tion them­selves and en­sure that the Op­po­si­tion has max­i­mum im­pact on so­ci­ety,” he added.

There has al­so been spec­u­la­tion that Beck­les could ap­point PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader Sham­fa Cud­joe to the Sen­ate.

How­ev­er, Cud­joe pre­vi­ous­ly told Guardian Me­dia that she has no in­ter­est in be­com­ing a sen­a­tor at this time.

At­tempts to con­tact Al-Rawi and John-Bates for com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.