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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Senate President uses vote to break 3 ties

by

18 days ago
20250625

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi is dis­ap­point­ed with the Gov­ern­ment bench for re­fus­ing to en­ter­tain amend­ments put for­ward dur­ing the de­bate on the Chil­dren Life Fund Amend­ment Bill 2025.

In a rare oc­cur­rence on Mon­day, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark cast three tie-break­ing votes in favour of the Gov­ern­ment, en­abling the Sen­ate to pass the leg­is­la­tion with amend­ments - some­thing Al-Rawi yes­ter­day claimed he had not seen over the course of his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer.

“In my 15 years in Par­lia­ment, I have nev­er seen a po­si­tion where an en­tire 15 ver­sus 15 oc­curred three times. The bill is sev­en claus­es long. So, of the five claus­es, three of them had a dead­lock. The first three,” Al-Rawi told mem­bers of the me­dia dur­ing a brief­ing host­ed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) at the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s Of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Like in the Low­er House where the bill was passed, the PNM ex­pressed con­cern in the Sen­ate over the pow­er giv­en to the Min­is­ter of Health, who, un­der the re­vised leg­is­la­tion, will be al­lowed to over­rule the de­ci­sion of the Chil­dren Life Fund Au­thor­i­ty (CLFA).

“In sum­ma­ry, we point­ed out to the Gov­ern­ment that whilst we had no prob­lem with the min­is­ter hav­ing a point of view and even a re­con­sid­er­a­tion of mat­ters, we felt it in keep­ing with laws that have hap­pened be­fore that you ought to use a tri­bunal in be­tween,” Al-Rawi ex­plained.

He said the In­de­pen­dent bench al­so sug­gest­ed amend­ments.

“The med­ical ex­pert on the in­de­pen­dent bench, Dr (De­sirée) Mur­ray, was point­ing out to the Gov­ern­ment, ‘look, you’ve got some things wrong. They list­ed ill­ness­es as liv­er trans­plant pa­tients. How could a pa­tient be an ill­ness?’ There were ba­sic things like that that Dr Mur­ray was point­ing out that are sig­nif­i­cant is­sues.”

How­ev­er, he added, “What un­for­tu­nate­ly hap­pened is that the Gov­ern­ment ba­si­cal­ly said we’re not go­ing to en­ter­tain any amend­ments, es­pe­cial­ly from the Op­po­si­tion, it seemed. And that’s rather un­for­tu­nate be­cause in the list of amend­ments that I cir­cu­lat­ed and that the in­de­pen­dent bench cir­cu­lat­ed, these re­al­ly touched to mak­ing the law bet­ter.”

Al-Rawi said he thought it was pru­dent to raise this mat­ter be­cause Op­po­si­tion Leader and PNM leader-elect, Pene­lope Beck­les, said that the par­ty would sup­port good law and pledged to im­prove laws where nec­es­sary.

“I saw the dis­com­fort of pub­lic ser­vants pret­ty much in that de­bate. It was ab­solute­ly clear that both the op­po­si­tion and the in­de­pen­dent bench were mak­ing very sig­nif­i­cant ob­ser­va­tions and had pro­pos­als for amend­ments, but there was just hell-bent at­ti­tude, hard luck,” he lament­ed.

He said the Gov­ern­ment would not even en­ter­tain a ba­sic amend­ment which called for re­mov­ing a pro­vi­sion in the cri­te­ria to qual­i­fy for the CLF, which stat­ed that the child (un­der the age of 18) must be un­mar­ried.

Al-Rawi said the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had al­ready abol­ished child mar­riages so that pro­vi­sion is un­nec­es­sary.

“Even those most ba­sic amend­ments, they wouldn’t al­low. No, we’re not go­ing to do it. And there­fore, that’s why I said yes­ter­day’s vote on the com­mit­tee stage was rather re­mark­able,” he said.

Al-Rawi said the new Gov­ern­ment must re­mem­ber that the coun­try is a democ­ra­cy, and ob­ser­va­tions made about par­tic­u­lar laws are not an at­tack on their au­thor­i­ty but an at­tempt to put peo­ple first.

The leg­isla­tive changes pro­posed by the Gov­ern­ment to the CLF in­clude ex­pand­ed el­i­gi­bil­i­ty, min­is­te­r­i­al re­view of de­ci­sions, po­ten­tial for an in­creased grant ceil­ing and the al­lowance for for­eign med­ical spe­cial­ists. The bill was even­tu­al­ly passed.


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