Ke­jan Haynes

Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate Wade Mark con­demned what he de­scribed as ha­rass­ment and in­tim­i­da­tion di­rect­ed at In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, say­ing such ac­tions un­der­mine par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy and will not be tol­er­at­ed.

Speak­ing dur­ing Mon­day’s sit­ting, Mark is­sued a point­ed re­buke to those tar­get­ing mem­bers of the Up­per House over their votes, par­tic­u­lar­ly ahead of the de­bate on the con­tro­ver­sial Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025.

“When words or ac­tions cross the line in­to ha­rass­ment, in­tim­i­da­tion or at­tempts to shame sen­a­tors for how they vote or pres­sure them to vote in a par­tic­u­lar way, that is some­thing en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent—and it will not be tol­er­at­ed,” Mark said. “Such ac­tions strike at the very heart of par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy and may con­sti­tute a se­ri­ous breach of priv­i­lege.”

He said sen­a­tors have a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to speak and vote freely, “guid­ed by con­science and with­out due in­flu­ence,” and warned that any breach of this free­dom would trig­ger con­se­quences.

“Let this serve as a clear warn­ing to all,” Mark said. “This House, and cer­tain­ly this chair, will act firm­ly to pro­tect the priv­i­leges, rights and im­mu­ni­ties of this Sen­ate col­lec­tive­ly and each sen­a­tor in­di­vid­u­al­ly. That pro­tec­tion will be ex­er­cised to the full ex­tent of the Sen­ate’s au­thor­i­ty and, if nec­es­sary, the ap­pro­pri­ate av­enues for re­dress will be pur­sued with­out hes­i­ta­tion.”

With­out nam­ing names, Mark’s com­ments came one day af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress launched a scathing pub­lic at­tack on the In­de­pen­dent Sen­ate bench, ques­tion­ing their im­par­tial­i­ty and ac­cus­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo of ap­point­ing them to block gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion.

At a UNC me­dia brief­ing on Sun­day, par­ty PRO Dr Kirk Meighoo sug­gest­ed the In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors were not tru­ly in­de­pen­dent, ar­gu­ing, “The Con­sti­tu­tion con­tains no such term. They are pres­i­den­tial sen­a­tors and in this case, they’ve been ap­point­ed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, a long-stand­ing and deeply em­bed­ded fig­ure with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.”

Meighoo said if at least four In­de­pen­dents did not sup­port the bill—which seeks to de­ny for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young a pen­sion on the grounds that he did not serve a full year—they would be en­abling the PNM “to con­tin­ue to rape the Trea­sury, even in Op­po­si­tion.”

In his rul­ing from the chair, Mark de­fend­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of all sen­a­tors and cit­ed Cana­di­an par­lia­men­tary prece­dent to re­in­force that at­tempts to im­prop­er­ly re­flect on mem­bers’ votes or mo­tives con­sti­tute a breach of priv­i­lege.

“This free­dom is not a mere cour­tesy, it is a fun­da­men­tal con­sti­tu­tion­al right, sacro­sanct and be­yond chal­lenge or com­pro­mise,” he said. “To re­flect im­prop­er­ly on a vote in the House and mo­tives of some mem­bers is a breach of priv­i­lege. Let me be clear: healthy crit­i­cism is not on­ly per­mit­ted, it is ex­pect­ed in any func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy.”

“But what we are deal­ing with here,” he added, “is not mere crit­i­cism.”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira al­so pushed back against the UNC’s at­tacks. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia ahead of the sit­ting, he said: “If the gov­ern­ment wants sup­port from the In­de­pen­dent bench, that’s easy—just give us co­gent, com­pelling and per­sua­sive ar­gu­ments. Some­how, I think that might work bet­ter than try­ing to de­mean and be­lit­tle us or via veiled threats and at­tempts at in­tim­i­da­tion.”

Vieira, the longest-serv­ing In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, de­fend­ed the bench’s han­dling of the Chil­dren’s Life Fund Amend­ment Bill ear­li­er this year, dur­ing which the In­de­pen­dent bench sided with the Op­po­si­tion at com­mit­tee stage, forc­ing Mark to use his cast­ing vote to break a 15-15 tie.

He ques­tioned whether the gov­ern­ment be­lieved the In­de­pen­dents should have ig­nored flaws in the leg­is­la­tion.

“Sup­port doesn’t mean be­ing blind to flaws in the draft­ing,” he said. “Any­one fol­low­ing the de­bate and what oc­curred at com­mit­tee stage will see that each mem­ber on the In­de­pen­dent bench, in his or her own way, draw­ing from his or her area of ex­per­tise, sought to im­prove the leg­is­la­tion—not to tor­pe­do or de­rail it.”