Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she was on the edge of her seat wait­ing to see how Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark would break an­oth­er 15-15 dead­lock in the Up­per House, but says she is not con­cerned about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fu­ture Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion be­ing de­feat­ed.

Mark again used his cast­ing vote on Mon­day night, this time to se­cure pas­sage of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill af­ter all 15 Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors sup­port­ed the leg­is­la­tion while the six Op­po­si­tion and nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.

It was the sec­ond time in less than a week that Mark was called up­on to break a 15-15 tie, hav­ing al­so cast the de­cid­ing vote to pass the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill.

Asked whether re­peat­ed­ly re­ly­ing on the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent’s cast­ing vote was sus­tain­able, Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tained that Mark in­de­pen­dent­ly de­cides how to ex­er­cise that vote.

“The Sen­ate Pres­i­dent is just as in­de­pen­dent as the Pres­i­dent’s sen­a­tors. He’s just as in­de­pen­dent as Chris­tine was as Sen­ate Pres­i­dent and An­nisette-George as Speak­er,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “I was on the edge of my seat just like every­one else, wait­ing to see how he would vote. Tense times.”

The two dead­locks have raised an­oth­er ques­tion for the Gov­ern­ment: What hap­pens when leg­is­la­tion re­quires more than a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty and there­fore can­not be passed sole­ly with the sup­port of its 15 sen­a­tors and a cast­ing vote?

Asked whether she was con­cerned that fu­ture spe­cial-ma­jor­i­ty leg­is­la­tion could be de­feat­ed if the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors with­held their sup­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing her de­c­la­ra­tion that the Gov­ern­ment would no longer en­ter­tain their amend­ments, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­peared un­fazed.

“If it fails, so what? We will sim­ply find an­oth­er way. These things don’t both­er me; I al­ways find a way,” she said.

She al­so dis­missed the prospect of ap­proach­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo if the nine sen­a­tors ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent con­tin­ue with­hold­ing sup­port from Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion.

“I will con­tin­ue do­ing what I was elect­ed to do. Peo­ple should show up and fight elec­tions if they want to de­ter­mine leg­is­la­tion,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­so told that a re­view of par­lia­men­tary records showed the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors have sup­port­ed Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion more of­ten than not.

She re­ject­ed that char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and called for their vot­ing record to be ex­am­ined over a longer pe­ri­od.

“I think you should go back and see how the Pres­i­dent’s sen­a­tors have vot­ed over the last ten years. They are a PNM par­ty group,” she said.

“In fact, a num­ber of them ben­e­fit­ed un­der the PNM fi­nan­cial­ly over the last decade.”

The Prime Min­is­ter did not iden­ti­fy which sen­a­tors she was re­fer­ring to or spec­i­fy the fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits she al­leged they had re­ceived.