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Monday, March 17, 2025

UNC fires back at Independent Senators

by

Renuka Singh
1239 days ago
20211024
Independent Senators Anthony Vieira, second from left, and Paul Richards, right, with colleagues during the motion to remove President Paula-Mae Weekes last Thursday in Parliament.

Independent Senators Anthony Vieira, second from left, and Paul Richards, right, with colleagues during the motion to remove President Paula-Mae Weekes last Thursday in Parliament.

PARLIAMENT POOL PHOTOGRAPHER

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Sen­a­tors Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al and David Nakhid are chal­leng­ing state­ments made by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors An­tho­ny Vieira and Paul Richards about Thurs­day’s failed mo­tion to re­move Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes over the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) fi­as­co.

Vieira has been re­port­ed as de­scrib­ing Thurs­day’s pro­ceed­ings as a “fish mar­ket” and said that he was of­fend­ed that the UNC mem­bers had said the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors vot­ed with the Gov­ern­ment to toe the line. Richards too has been re­port­ed as liken­ing the at­mos­phere cre­at­ed by the Op­po­si­tion to that of a fish mar­ket.

Yes­ter­day, Lutch­me­di­al ques­tioned why Vieira stayed silent on Thurs­day but chose to at­tack the Op­po­si­tion in the me­dia.

“If the Sen­a­tor thought any­one was con­flict­ed, he had a du­ty to raise it in the cham­ber so his al­le­ga­tion could be prop­er­ly an­swered. No In­de­pen­dent or PNM mem­ber who sat in the House raised that is­sue, which is sur­pris­ing as they are all quite com­fort­able rais­ing points that lack sub­stance,” she said in a re­lease.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s mo­tion was sparked by the chain of events that led to the even­tu­al col­lapse of the PSC and the High Court rul­ing which made the act­ing ap­point­ment of for­mer CoP Gary Ger­if­fith, af­ter his three-year tenure end­ed in Au­gust, as well as that of Mc Don­ald Ja­cob null and void, ef­fec­tive­ly leav­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice with no sub­stan­tive head.

Vieira re­port­ed­ly took such strong ob­jec­tion to the Op­po­si­tion’s al­le­ga­tions about toe­ing the line when they vot­ed against the mo­tion that he said he in­tend­ed to bring a mo­tion of con­tempt against them.

Lutch­me­di­al ac­cused Viera of a lack of un­der­stand­ing of the is­sues that led to the UNC mo­tion, which was de­feat­ed fol­low­ing a vote of 24 for and 47 against.

“Sen­a­tor Vieira has dis­played (per­haps) will­ful ig­no­rance and lack of un­der­stand­ing of the is­sues at hand. He vot­ed against the mo­tion with­out an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the salient facts, which is a com­plete be­tray­al of his oath of of­fice,” she said.

She al­so ac­cused Vieira of wear­ing “bal­isi­er-coloured glass­es.”

“In­stead of par­rot­ing PNM pro­pa­gan­da, Sen­a­tor Viera should read the mo­tion filed by the Ho­n­ourable Mem­ber for Siparia and all the in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main sur­round­ing this de­ba­cle. This may pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­er­cise some in­de­pen­dent thought on se­ri­ous mat­ters af­fect­ing the coun­try, in­stead of com­ment­ing on the be­hav­iour of oth­ers with sanc­ti­mo­nious piety. If he wants to dis­cuss im­por­tant mat­ters in whis­pered tones over tea and crum­pets, he can do that on his own time,” Lutch­me­di­al said.

“The UNC will have its voice heard in­side and out­side of the Par­lia­ment. They can mute our mikes but not our voic­es,” she added.

In a ref­er­ence to In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Charisse Seep­er­sad, who re­fused to re­cuse her­self, as per a UNC re­quest, be­cause she is the sis­ter of PSC chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad, Lutch­me­di­al said Par­lia­ment was “not a place to shield your col­leagues, who see no is­sue with pur­su­ing pri­vate in­ter­ests by vot­ing against the es­tab­lish­ment of a tri­bunal to in­ves­ti­gate mat­ters which in­volve pos­si­ble wrong­do­ing by their sib­ling, but who ab­stain from vot­ing on mat­ters that af­fect na­tion­al in­ter­est like the gut­ting of the Pro­cure­ment Act.”

“That be­hav­iour, in my view, is worse than what we see in any fish mar­ket, as the fish­mon­gers and those who pa­tro­n­ise them ex­hib­it a high­er lev­el of de­cen­cy, hon­esty and in­tegri­ty,” she said.

Lutch­me­di­al said it was cu­ri­ous that Vieira con­sid­ered the Op­po­si­tion desk-thump­ing “un­be­com­ing of Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, but is com­fort­able with call­ing cit­i­zens “id­iots.”

“The Op­po­si­tion Sen­ate bench will not be in­tim­i­dat­ed by the pomp and ar­ro­gance of some­one who no one vot­ed for and who re­fus­es to stand for what is right and just. The false and deroga­to­ry state­ments made by Sen­a­tor Vieira about mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion and their con­duct on­ly serves to bol­ster the view that the Sen­a­tor is more ea­ger to join the PNM cam­paign to si­lence the voice of the Op­po­si­tion, as op­posed to seek­ing an­swers on be­half of the pop­u­la­tion,” Lutch­me­di­al said.

“We re­main com­mit­ted to our du­ty de­spite any mis­guid­ed di­a­tribes em­a­nat­ing from those who hide be­hind the fig leaf of an in­de­pen­dent ti­tle.”

Mean­while, her col­league Nakhid tack­led both Vieira and Richards, say­ing they were act­ing like judge, ju­ry and ex­e­cu­tion­er.

“Sen­a­tor Vieira made the wildest of al­le­ga­tions that mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion had im­put­ed the in­tegri­ty and rep­u­ta­tion of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors by say­ing that they are not in­de­pen­dent and that they were “singing for their sup­per.” Sen­a­tor Vieira fails to re­alise the irony and hypocrisy of such a blan­ket state­ment against un­named mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion – ef­fec­tive­ly, against all of us – and if Sen­a­tor Vieira does not im­me­di­ate­ly with­draw this state­ment which im­pli­cates my­self and oth­er Sen­a­tors, who made no such re­marks, the Sen­a­tor will be tak­en be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee,” Nakhid said in a state­ment.

“To add in­sult to his own du­plic­i­ty, Sen­a­tor Vieira prof­fered a lengthy di­a­tribe on the pro­ceed­ings in Par­lia­ment, in­clud­ing the opin­ion “that the mo­tion should not have even seen the light of day,” and this with­out hav­ing heard any de­bate on said mo­tion.”

He added, “Well, Sen­a­tor Vieira is en­ti­tled to his opin­ion and so are we. The cit­i­zens of this coun­try will look past the hyp­o­crit­i­cal, well-clothed in­ci­vil­i­ty that pass­es for in­de­pen­dence by many com­men­ta­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“As for Sen­a­tor Paul Richards, who likened the pro­ceed­ings and by im­pli­ca­tion the be­hav­iour of the Op­po­si­tion to a fish mar­ket, I will re­spect­ful­ly in­form the Sen­a­tor that some­times in a fish mar­ket, the stench that aris­es can be com­ing from your own stall. For these un­war­rant­ed and un­nec­es­sary at­tacks by both the afore­men­tioned In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, we await the quick­est of apolo­gies in like man­ner to the in­sults giv­en.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Vieira for a com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful as he nei­ther an­swered his phone nor re­spond­ed to mes­sages.


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