SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark says Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Nigel De Fre­itas should not have been el­e­vat­ed to Sen­ate Pres­i­dent with­out a “cool­ing-off” pe­ri­od from his min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio.

Mark said the sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent from when he was ap­point­ed Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2010 be­cause De Fre­itas gave up his port­fo­lio in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture just hours be­fore he was ap­point­ed Sen­ate Pres­i­dent yes­ter­day.

He said al­though he had con­grat­u­lat­ed De Fre­itas af­ter the an­nounce­ment was made, he was not hap­py with the ap­point­ment.

“I find it quite un­sat­is­fac­to­ry and dis­ap­point­ing that a gov­ern­ment can take some­one who is a min­is­ter, a Min­is­ter in a Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture just a few hours ago, dis­robe him, or rob him of his robe and just put him in the seat of an of­fice that sup­posed to have cer­tain tenets and prin­ci­ples, im­par­tial­i­ty, neu­tral­i­ty, un­bi­ased con­duct,” he said.

De Fre­itas, who has re­placed Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo as Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, was elect­ed un­op­posed dur­ing yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of the Sen­ate. 

In an­nounc­ing the ap­point­ment, Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Sen­a­tor Amery Browne con­firmed that de Fre­itas will no longer hold the post of Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries. 

Kan­ga­loo re­signed as Sen­ate Pres­i­dent ahead of to­mor­row’s Elec­toral Col­lege vote for the sev­enth Pres­i­dent of T&T. She is the gov­ern­ment’s nom­i­nee for the post.

Cen­tral busi­ness­man Richie Sookhai, who has been ap­point­ed a Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor, stepped down as pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce to ac­cept the ap­point­ment. 

Mark said he is not dis­count­ing De Fre­itas’ abil­i­ty to be un­bi­ased but be­lieves some­one else should have been cho­sen for the po­si­tion, es­pe­cial­ly since the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent acts as Pres­i­dent when­ev­er the hold­er of that of­fice is not in the ju­ris­dic­tion.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has raised sev­er­al con­cerns about the nom­i­na­tion of now-for­mer Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­roo to be­come T&T’s sev­enth Pres­i­dent. Mark re­peat­ed those yes­ter­day.

“You have a politi­cian leav­ing the bench as Pres­i­dent to go in­to Pres­i­dent’s House as a re­sult of what will take place on Fri­day, so you have an ac­tive, card-car­ry­ing Pres­i­dent in charge of the high­est of­fice of the land and then you bring an­oth­er ac­tive politi­cian who was the Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture to sit as the pres­i­dent,” he said.

He said when he was ap­point­ed Speak­er in 2010 it was not un­der the same cir­cum­stances.

“We went through an elec­tion and the peo­ple vot­ed for us and dur­ing that pe­ri­od there was a hia­tus, so we had six weeks, or five weeks of cam­paign­ing and I was a mem­ber of the op­po­si­tion par­ty, so even though I was el­e­vat­ed as a Speak­er I was not a sit­ting mem­ber of a Cab­i­net,” Mark said.

He said De Fre­itas should not be moved from “zone to zone” with­out a cool­ing-off pe­ri­od.

Asked about the ap­point­ment of busi­ness­man Richie Sookhai as a Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor, Mark said the UNC is not wor­ried.

He said he was told Sookhai was a for­mer mem­ber of the UNC but he would have to check whether that was true.

“We do not see Richie Sookhai as any threat to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. We are go­ing to bury the PNM when­ev­er Dr Row­ley calls the next gen­er­al elec­tion and Sookhai or no Sookhai, it will be suck-eye,” Mark said.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh de­scribed the day’s sit­ting as in­ter­est­ing. He said he was pleased with De Fre­itas’ ap­point­ment as he al­ways found him to be fair when­ev­er he act­ed as Sen­ate Pres­i­dent.

“He has shown be­fore that he has filled that role ad­e­quate­ly. He was al­ways a fair per­son, he was al­ways in­de­pen­dent on that bench as vice-pres­i­dent and I think he knows all the leg­is­la­tion, the ins and outs, the rules of the house so over­all I am pleased with what hap­pened this morn­ing,” Deyals­ingh said.

He de­scribed Sookhai’s ap­point­ment as a good po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy, say­ing it could be seen as the rul­ing PNM reach­ing out to dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ics.

“Busi­ness, East In­di­an, Hin­du. I think it’s a good move po­lit­i­cal­ly, I think it’s a good move in terms of a strat­e­gy be­cause we need busi­ness in­put in most of the bills that come in­to here.

“Busi­ness will come in­to en­er­gy bills, all oth­er bills, even bills where you have per­sons in dis­tress, so­cial ser­vices, he will have an ex­cel­lent in­put and I look for­ward to his con­tri­bu­tion,” he said.