Renu­ka Singh

A re­sound­ing de­feat end­ed the rau­cous pro­ceed­ings to im­peach Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes yes­ter­day.

The un­prece­dent­ed mo­tion to re­move a sit­ting Pres­i­dent failed with just 24 votes for and 47 against.

All the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors vot­ed against the mo­tion.

The fail­ure of the mo­tion means that the Pres­i­dent will not have to face a tri­bunal.

Just af­ter 10.30 am yes­ter­day, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­vened to lay out the ground­work to es­tab­lish the Elec­toral Col­lege to vote on the mo­tion to re­move the Pres­i­dent.

The pro­ceed­ings were dis­rupt­ed so of­ten, how­ev­er, that House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George sus­pend­ed the sit­ting to give every­one a 15-minute break.

At 11 am, the House re­con­vened but it was more of the same.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­lowed to read out the mo­tion to re­move the Pres­i­dent in­to the Par­lia­men­tary record.

At the start of the pro­ceed­ings, An­nisette-George had made it clear that she would al­low the Op­po­si­tion Leader to read the mo­tion but not to ex­pand on it, say­ing that the mo­tion had to be vot­ed on with­out de­bate.

The Op­po­si­tion bench erupt­ed in re­ac­tion, in­sist­ing that their leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, was be­ing de­nied from read­ing out her mo­tion and for the mat­ter to be opened to de­bate.

“The leader of the Op­po­si­tion’s let­ter al­so seems to sug­gest that the de­bate she de­sires should take place in the Elec­toral Col­lege, in­deed the Mem­ber as­sert­ed that,” An­nisette-George said.

She quot­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s let­ter, which said that it was “ab­surd” to ask the House and Sen­ate to vote on the mo­tion with­out de­bate.

“How­ev­er, it is strik­ing­ly odd that the leader of the Op­po­si­tion would re­fer to a clear pro­vi­sion of the Con­sti­tu­tion as ‘ab­surd’,” An­nisette-George said.

An­nisette-George said Per­sad-Bisses­sar could not have been call­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion ab­surd be­cause it was at vari­ance with her “mis­guid­ed opin­ion.”

This was met with a cho­rus of dis­sent from the Op­po­si­tion bench.

An­nisette-George read out the sec­tions of the Con­sti­tu­tion which sup­port­ed her stance that a de­bate at this stage in the pro­ceed­ings was not per­mit­ted.

Ac­cord­ing to the by-laws, she said the mo­tion must con­tain all the de­tails that are to be dis­cussed and vot­ed on and those de­tails can­not be amend­ed or ex­pand­ed dur­ing the sit­ting. An­nisette-George said it was Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure her mo­tion con­tained “suf­fi­cient de­tail” to as­sist the Elec­toral Col­lege to de­ter­mine whether a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion by a tri­bunal was need­ed.

“Up­on re­ceipt of the re­port by the tri­bunal, head­ed by the Chief Jus­tice, the Elec­toral Col­lege on the sum­mons of the Speak­er, con­sid­ers the re­port.

“It is at this stage that the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides for a de­bate to take place by the Elec­toral Col­lege,” An­nisette-George said.

On Wednes­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar sent a let­ter to An­nisette-George ask­ing, in­ter alia, that In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Charisse Seep­er­sad be re­cused from the vote as her sis­ter is Bliss Seep­er­sad, for­mer chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors would not vote against the Pres­i­dent, as she was the one who ap­point­ed them.

An­nisette-George ex­plained why she would not bar any­one from the mo­tion.

“The claim of the Ho­n­ourable leader of the Op­po­si­tion tak­en to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion, would sug­gest that even the pro­pos­er and the mem­bers who signed in sup­port may be per­ceived as bi­ased,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so called on An­nisette-George to re­cuse her­self, as she was the one who draft­ed the 2009 Or­der to ap­point a po­lice com­mis­sion­er that was over­turned by the High Court two weeks ago.

“No right-think­ing per­son will see the re­motest con­nec­tion be­tween that 2009 or­der and the sub­ject mat­ter of this mo­tion at hand. The as­ser­tion is ab­solute­ly il­log­i­cal and I re­ject it out­right,” the Speak­er said.

Af­ter near­ly two hours of in­ter­rup­tions, ac­cu­sa­tions of mic tam­per­ing and pro­tract­ed desk thump­ing, the mo­tion pi­lot­ed by the Op­po­si­tion re­ceived 24 votes for and 47 votes against. All the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against the mo­tion.

Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein ques­tioned why the Speak­er’s re­sponse to Per­sad-Bises­sar’s let­ter was be­ing read in­to Hansard while her let­ter was not.

“I be­lieve be­fore serv­ing in this House, you would have served in the oth­er place and there­fore the Stand­ing Or­ders in both places are quite sim­i­lar and there­fore, as you quite right­ly know, un­der the item of an­nounce­ments, what you are seek­ing is not the prac­tice, it is not the pro­ce­dure and it is not al­lowed,” she said.

Ho­sein coun­tered that he al­so served as an at­tor­ney and as such, he called for fair­ness jus­tice and eq­ui­ty.