KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

While Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les re­mains mum on Janelle John-Bates’ sen­a­to­r­i­al fu­ture, Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Bench in the Sen­ate Dr Amery Browne is ask­ing for pa­tience, stress­ing the need for Beck­les to have time to make the best de­ci­sion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Dr Browne said, “This Sen­a­tor (John-Bates), who, as far as I’m aware, has not been ac­cused of break­ing any law or com­mit­ting any crim­i­nal of­fence, has ad­mit­ted to an er­ror, has of­fered a res­ig­na­tion; it’s be­ing du­ly con­sid­ered.

“Five days, I think, let’s give a lit­tle more time to the process. Let’s have con­fi­dence in our Leader of the Op­po­si­tion to make the right de­ci­sion, to con­vey it in a re­spon­si­ble man­ner, and the Sen­ate team, the com­mit­tees, etc, will move on… She’s (John-Bates) al­ready been re­placed on this spe­cif­ic com­mit­tee (Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee), so all the right steps are be­ing tak­en.”  

He said un­til a de­ci­sion is made, John-Bates, who con­tin­ues to par­tic­i­pate in the Sen­ate, has al­ready been re­placed on the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC).

Yes­ter­day made it five days since John-Bates of­fered her res­ig­na­tion in the Sen­ate.

At­tempts to con­tact Beck­les to find out her de­ci­sion have been fu­tile.

In the mean­time, sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters con­tin­ue to crit­i­cise Beck­les for not be­ing swift in her judg­ment.

Voic­ing his crit­i­cism yes­ter­day via his What­sApp sta­tus, a fre­quent plat­form for Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo to ad­dress na­tion­al con­cerns such as the bud­get date, Tan­coo said, “Why has the PNM leader re­fused to act de­spite sig­nif­i­cant al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct against two PNM sen­a­tors? PNM has no in­tegri­ty.” 

How­ev­er, dis­miss­ing pres­sure from the Gov­ern­ment to re­spond quick­ly, Dr Browne said there are Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment (MPs) cur­rent­ly be­fore the courts.

He said, “I could just dis­miss the Gov­ern­ment and their views and opin­ions be­cause they have no au­thor­i­ty in this mat­ter and they them­selves are com­plete­ly com­pro­mised.

“If we’re talk­ing about com­pro­mis­ing the Par­lia­ment and com­mit­tees, it’s our Prime Min­is­ter who stood and said that there was an ap­proach for bribery for votes, which has nev­er been clar­i­fied or ac­tioned or treat­ed with. They pre­tend that nev­er hap­pened and that’s on the of­fi­cial pub­lic record… We have Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment who are lit­er­al­ly be­fore the courts at this time, lit­er­al­ly. You don’t have to use an anal­o­gy there and those process­es have been go­ing on for years.”

He added that the em­bat­tled Sen­a­tor con­tin­ues to re­ceive his sup­port and that of the PNM.

How­ev­er, there are crit­ics who say John-Bates was mis­led by her own col­leagues in­clud­ing Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors Faris Al-Rawi and Fos­ter Cum­mings.

While Al-Rawi avoid­ed the me­dia for the first time yes­ter­day, Cum­mings ad­dressed the mat­ter di­rect­ly but dis­tanced him­self from it.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Cum­mings said, “I am not in­volved in that sit­u­a­tion and all mat­ters per­tain­ing to what you’re ask­ing me about are be­ing treat­ed with by the ap­pro­pri­ate per­sons in par­tic­u­lar the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and she has al­ready made a state­ment on that and that’s what we have to go with.”

He al­so does not be­lieve Beck­les should be pres­sured to make a swift de­ci­sion.

He added, “The Leader of the Op­po­si­tion must act in her own tim­ing and on her own coun­sel and not be guid­ed by the pres­sures... Is there a lim­it? Is there a time­frame?”