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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

UNC accuses Independent senators of bias ahead of key Pension Bill vote

by

10 days ago
20250630
UNC Public Relations Officer Dr Kirk Meighoo addresses members of the media during yesterday’s press conference.

UNC Public Relations Officer Dr Kirk Meighoo addresses members of the media during yesterday’s press conference.

COURTESY: UNC/ FACEBOOK

Sto­ries by Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) launched a scathing at­tack on the In­de­pen­dent Sen­ate bench yes­ter­day, not on­ly ques­tion­ing their in­de­pen­dence but in­fer­ring that the Pres­i­dent, who has close PNM ties, placed them there to thwart the gov­ern­ment.

This came one day be­fore the Sen­ate was set to de­bate the con­tro­ver­sial Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025 which will ef­fec­tive­ly dis­qual­i­fy Stu­art Young from re­ceiv­ing a prime min­is­ter’s pen­sion for hav­ing failed to hold of­fice for at least one year.

The Bill needs a three-fifth ma­jor­i­ty to pass, mean­ing the gov­ern­ment will need at least four votes from ei­ther the Op­po­si­tion or In­de­pen­dent bench­es.

Speak­ing at their par­ty head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, UNC PRO Dr Kirk Meighoo said if at least four In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors do not sup­port the bill “they will ac­tu­al­ly al­low the PNM to con­tin­ue to rape the Trea­sury, even in Op­po­si­tion.”

Dr Meighoo went as far as to sug­gest that there is no such thing as an “in­de­pen­dent” sen­a­tor.

“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.”

He went on to ac­cuse the Pres­i­dent of be­ing, “the most po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned head of state in the his­to­ry of our re­pub­lic.”

“Her own lengthy po­lit­i­cal ca­reer as a PNM sen­a­tor in 2001, a PNM min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in 2012, the Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs in 2015 or 2005, Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, the PNM MP for Pointe-A-Pierre in 2007, and the high­ly con­tro­ver­sial PNM elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate in 2015 is well doc­u­ment­ed. She once in­fa­mous­ly de­clared that she was spread­ing the gospel of the PNM.”

He added: “Her ex­tend­ed Gar­cia-Kan­ga­loo fam­i­ly in­cludes promi­nent PNM fig­ures such as for­mer Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia, PNM-ap­point­ed su­per-tech­no­crat Noel Gar­cia, and her hus­band Ker­wyn Gar­cia, who re­ceived mil­lions of dol­lars in state briefs un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment.”

The UNC PRO even crit­i­cised where the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors re­side, say­ing eight of them live in north Trinidad and there­fore the bench is not a re­flec­tion of so­ci­ety as a whole.

He al­so ques­tioned the in­tegri­ty of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira SC who re­ceived state briefs from the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and Si­mon de la Bastide SC for hav­ing “long-stand­ing” ties with the PNM.

Cit­ing the de­bate on amend­ments to the Chil­dren’s Life Fund, Meighoo said: “In the first work­ing sit­ting of the 13th Re­pub­li­can Par­lia­ment, on three oc­ca­sions in the com­mit­tee stage, every sin­gle one of these so-called In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors aligned with the PNM to cre­ate a 15-15 tie.

“Re­mem­ber, I said we had 16 seats, but one of them is the Pres­i­dent, so a 15-15 tie. So, the speak­er had to in­ter­vene each time to break the tie, and this re­sult­ed in a very pro­longed ses­sion for such a short and un­con­tro­ver­sial bill to help chil­dren. This una­nim­i­ty was un­usu­al be­cause the so-called in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are not sup­posed to co­or­di­nate their votes.”

Meighoo said they are not sup­posed to cau­cus and this shows just how aligned the pres­i­dent’s ap­pointees are with the op­po­si­tion PNM.

The for­mer Sen­ate bench al­so did not es­cape Meighoo’s cri­tique, as he called them “rub­ber stamps” for the then-PNM gov­ern­ment.

“On 16 oc­ca­sions, so-called in­de­pen­dent Paul Richards al­ways vot­ed with the PNM, 16 times. Sen­a­tor Vieira vot­ed with the PNM 15 of 16 times. Sen­a­tor Charisse Seep­er­sad, sis­ter of Bliss Seep­er­sad, vot­ed with the PNM 15 times.

“On 16 oc­ca­sions, Sen­a­tor Var­ma Deyals­ingh vot­ed with the PNM 14 times. Sen­a­tor Hazel Thomas (Thomp­son-Ahye), 14 times as well. Sen­a­tor Am­ri­ta De­onar­ine, 13 times. That doesn’t sound very in­de­pen­dent,” he said.

Turn­ing back to the cur­rent in­de­pen­dent bench, Meighoo brought at­ten­tion to an in­ci­dent last Fri­day where In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr De­sirée Mur­ray ob­ject­ed three times dur­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith. Twice was for rel­e­vance and once for im­pugn­ing im­prop­er mo­tives.

He’s call­ing on the nine sen­a­tors to not thwart the will of the peo­ple and be a “back­ward force.”

“Do not al­low the PNM to get away with this loop­hole, al­low­ing per­sons to col­lect over $1 mil­lion in pen­sion for just serv­ing one day, or even five sec­onds, as Colm Im­bert ar­gued when oth­er pub­lic ser­vants have to work for a min­i­mum of 10 years to re­ceive a pen­sion.

“The peo­ple are suf­fer­ing. This is op­pres­sion and in­jus­tice.”


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