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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Senator on UK court ruling of Local Govt extension: Parliamentarians to blame

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641 days ago
20230523
Independent Senator Dr Varma Deyalsingh

Independent Senator Dr Varma Deyalsingh

VASHTI SINGH

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh says he is ashamed and em­bar­rassed at the Privy Coun­cil’s re­cent rul­ing on the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment ex­ten­sion law. Deyals­ingh has said the fault was that of all in Par­lia­ment who passed that law—not the Cab­i­net and Ex­ec­u­tive alone. He said so dur­ing Tues­day's Sen­ate de­bate on an Op­po­si­tion mo­tion.

The in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor called for the Gov­ern­ment to in­tro­duce in Par­lia­ment, with­in three months, a bill on par­lia­men­tary au­ton­o­my.

Deyals­ingh said he sup­port­ed the mo­tion from the point of view of want­i­ng to for­ti­fy the de­gree of in­de­pen­dence leg­is­la­tors have from any in­flu­ence and con­trol.

He said the mo­tion brought up the is­sues of ex­ec­u­tive over­reach ver­sus leg­isla­tive over­reach, ex­ec­u­tive dis­re­spect for oth­er pil­lars of the State, fund­ing au­ton­o­my, more pow­er to the Speak­er and Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, the fall­out from rushed leg­is­la­tion, and the grant­i­ng of full leg­isla­tive au­ton­o­my.

“If there are short­com­ings or the pos­si­bil­i­ty of such aris­ing, we need to recog­nise and fix them,” Deyals­ingh said.

On leg­isla­tive au­ton­o­my, Deyals­ingh added, “I must say I was a bit ashamed and em­bar­rassed to be a mem­ber of this body when there was the Privy Coun­cil mat­ter where the Law Lords had to frown up­on us in the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Act 2022) the LG Re­form Act.

 “I was em­bar­rassed as I was in this body pass­ing leg­is­la­tion. And that piece of leg­is­la­tion when it went to the Law Lords we were ad­mon­ished. It ba­si­cal­ly said we were pass­ing leg­is­la­tion to take away peo­ple’s right to vote–a ba­sic de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right. I said to my­self, we were here; when we looked at that, it nev­er crossed our minds that there could be far-reach­ing con­se­quences.”

Deyals­ingh added, “And in that way, I won­dered if some­how we could get an im­prove­ment in this body to pre­vent things like that from hap­pen­ing in the fu­ture.

“There­fore, it was not just the Cab­i­net or the Ex­ec­u­tive to blame–but all of us to blame as we were here in the leg­isla­tive cham­ber who al­lowed the laws to go through that could have been chal­lenged and chas­tised by the ma­jor­i­ty judges in the Privy Coun­cil.”

Deyals­ingh said leg­is­la­tors should have more time to study bills–and staff to study them ful­ly–and bills should not be brought to Par­lia­ment and quick­ly passed in a two-day “hus­tle, like a thief in the night.”

 “We see the ju­di­cial fall­out from rushed leg­is­la­tion. Law that has to be done in two days is a dis­cour­tesy to us as leg­is­la­tors and to democ­ra­cy. We al­so need a leg­isla­tive agen­da and time to study these things. It would be a dis­ser­vice for us to pro­duce some­thing in a whirl­wind process,” Deyals­ingh added.

Deyals­ingh rec­om­mend­ed hav­ing laws draft­ed by a team ex­ter­nal to the Ex­ec­u­tive to avoid leg­is­la­tors get­ting blamed for pass­ing bad laws.

He said it could be done from out­side the Ex­ec­u­tive’s in­flu­ence and brought to Par­lia­ment with a “clean slate mi­nus ul­te­ri­or mo­tive and Ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers can then amend it.”

 He said if sen­a­tors can im­prove democ­ra­cy and pass laws with full scruti­ny by a team, “we may not be pass­ing laws that are chal­lenged in the Privy Coun­cil.”

Deyals­ingh sug­gest­ed the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion, Death Penal­ty Com­mit­tee, and oth­ers come up with laws and have the ex­ec­u­tive de­cide if it want­ed to go for­ward with them.

Par­lia­ment should have the au­ton­o­my to call a time­line to bring back sex­u­al ha­rass­ment laws for up­grad­ing, and he al­so sup­port­ed fi­nan­cial au­ton­o­my for Par­lia­ment and the Ju­di­cia­ry.  


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