PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The In­de­pen­dent bench in the Sen­ate proved de­ci­sive in the con­tentious Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2020, de­spite al­most the en­tire bench ab­stain­ing from vot­ing on the bill.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Maria Dil­lon-Re­my was the on­ly one among her group to vote yes, as the bill passed last night.

All oth­er In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, many of whom ex­pressed con­cern about be­ing placed in a bind with re­gard to the bill, ab­stained as the fi­nal vote tal­lied 16 votes for, 6 votes against and 8 ab­sten­tions.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh and Paul Richards both ex­pressed that they had been put be­tween a rock and a hard place with the bill, as there ap­peared to be sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure both for and against the bill’s pass­ing.

“This piece of leg­is­la­tion was giv­en some teeth by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, and I see here now that if we in­tend to wa­ter it down we might be send­ing a wrong mes­sage out there,” said Dr Deyals­ingh dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion as he ex­pressed reser­va­tions about the re­moval of a clause which would have al­lowed for gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment.

Deyals­ingh said there had been a his­to­ry of gov­ern­ments not al­ways act­ing in the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple, and the bill, as it stood did not pro­vide enough safe­guards for such pos­si­bil­i­ties.

He al­so ques­tioned if the bill could fi­nal­ly end the tit for tat which ap­peared to be in place for se­lec­tion, ref­er­enc­ing le­gal briefs favour­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly par­ti­san at­tor­neys.

“The pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tor could do the back­ground checks and do the cost fac­tor. Just like how they choose judges to hear cas­es, put their name in and pull out a name and say, ‘hey gov­ern­ment this is our best bet’,” he said, adding that sim­i­lar oc­cur­rences had been done in oth­er fields in med­i­cine.

“We have to stop that, give it to the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tor or of­fi­cer,” he said.

Richards, in his con­tri­bu­tion, said, “I have nev­er been so lob­bied from both sides.”

Richards, how­ev­er, put for­ward sev­er­al sug­ges­tions which were tak­en up for amend­ment dur­ing the Com­mit­tee stage of the bill.

De­spite mak­ing progress with those changes, the gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, stood firm on the claus­es which al­lowed for gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment agree­ments, the clause which wor­ried Richards sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

“We are mak­ing law not for who is in pow­er but who nec­es­sar­i­ly is in pow­er but who may come to pow­er and who may have quite malef­i­cent in­ten­tions where our pub­lic purse is con­cerned. And very of­ten if we leave these loop­holes with­out some sort of caveat or over­ly­ing pro­tec­tions we may find our­selves at un­scrupu­lous per­sons in the fu­ture,” he said.

He added, “Medi­um or long term fu­ture that will con­tin­ue or will ini­ti­ate the con­tin­ued rape of our trea­sury. And the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go quite frankly have been through enough of that.”