Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) has con­demned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­i­cism of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors fol­low­ing their re­jec­tion of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, warn­ing that the Gov­ern­ment risks cre­at­ing a cul­ture in which dis­agree­ment with those in pow­er car­ries con­se­quences.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer de­scribed the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­buke of the in­de­pen­dent bench as “un­be­com­ing” and ar­gued that the con­tro­ver­sy now ex­tends be­yond the leg­is­la­tion it­self to the treat­ment of in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions when they dis­agree with the Gov­ern­ment.

The CWU boss not­ed that all nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, join­ing the six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors to pro­duce a 15-15 tie in the Up­per House. Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark sub­se­quent­ly ex­er­cised his cast­ing vote in favour of the mea­sure, re­sult­ing in its pas­sage 16-15.

Guardian Me­dia pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar sharply crit­i­cised the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors af­ter the vote, de­scrib­ing them us­ing terms in­clud­ing “sa­tan­ic” and “scum­bags,” and say­ing the Gov­ern­ment would no longer ac­cept amend­ments from the in­de­pen­dent bench go­ing for­ward.

Ogeer said while the Prime Min­is­ter was en­ti­tled to strong­ly dis­agree with sen­a­tors and de­fend Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion, the union was con­cerned by the sug­ges­tion that fu­ture amend­ments from the in­de­pen­dent bench could be dis­re­gard­ed be­cause of the sen­a­tors’ vot­ing po­si­tion.

“There is al­so an im­por­tant dis­tinc­tion be­tween chal­leng­ing the rea­son­ing be­hind a vote and at­tack­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy of the peo­ple who cast it,” Ogeer said.

She warned that dis­re­gard­ing fu­ture con­tri­bu­tions be­cause of a pre­vi­ous vote could be viewed as “in­sti­tu­tion­al re­tal­i­a­tion” and could send a wider mes­sage to trade unions, jour­nal­ists, civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions and pro­fes­sion­als who chal­lenge de­ci­sions made by those ex­er­cis­ing pub­lic pow­er.

The union leader said dis­sent should not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be equat­ed with dis­loy­al­ty or sup­port for crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“Re­peat­ed­ly at CWU, we have said open­ly with­out fear or favour that dis­sent is not dis­loy­al­ty and scruti­ny should not be viewed as sab­o­tage,” Ogeer said.

She ar­gued that the pur­pose of the in­de­pen­dent bench was pre­cise­ly to al­low sen­a­tors to ex­er­cise judge­ment with­out be­ing re­quired to sat­is­fy ei­ther the Gov­ern­ment or Op­po­si­tion.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira has de­fend­ed the role of the bench, main­tain­ing that in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors do not rep­re­sent ei­ther po­lit­i­cal side and must con­sid­er leg­is­la­tion ac­cord­ing to their in­di­vid­ual judg­ment and what they be­lieve to be the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

The union said the po­ten­tial long-term con­se­quence of the dis­pute was more sig­nif­i­cant than harsh po­lit­i­cal lan­guage.

“The dan­ger is there­fore not sim­ply just harsh po­lit­i­cal lan­guage and re­buke. It is the prece­dent cre­at­ed when dis­agree­ment ap­pears to car­ry a penal­ty,” Ogeer said.

She warned that nor­mal­is­ing such an ap­proach could dis­cour­age in­de­pen­dent judge­ment and en­cour­age con­for­mi­ty in in­sti­tu­tions specif­i­cal­ly in­tend­ed to scru­ti­nise ex­ec­u­tive pow­er.

The dis­pute has al­so at­tract­ed crit­i­cism from the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, which called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to with­draw her re­marks about the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der and Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John sub­se­quent­ly de­fend­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s right to crit­i­cise the bench, with John ar­gu­ing that the mat­ter al­so in­volved free­dom of ex­pres­sion.

Ogeer main­tained that strong dis­agree­ment over the bill did not re­quire per­son­al hos­til­i­ty be­tween po­lit­i­cal of­fice­hold­ers and in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

“A strong gov­ern­ment does not need an In­de­pen­dent Bench that al­ways agrees with it,” Ogeer said.

“It needs in­sti­tu­tions strong enough to dis­agree with it and a po­lit­i­cal cul­ture ma­ture enough to hear that dis­agree­ment. Democ­ra­cy is test­ed not by how com­fort­ably we re­ceive agree­ment, but by how re­spon­si­bly we ex­er­cise pow­er when con­front­ed with dis­sent.”