Click to view full size

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has re­ject­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s claims of a “po­lit­i­cal pact” with the in­de­pen­dent bench, ar­gu­ing that re­cent vot­ing pat­terns in the Sen­ate show law­mak­ers act­ing on con­science and the mer­its of leg­is­la­tion rather than un­der op­po­si­tion di­rec­tion.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Beck­les point­ed to the vot­ing record of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors on a dozen pieces of leg­is­la­tion de­bat­ed be­tween June 2025 and Jan­u­ary, not­ing wide vari­a­tion since the Gov­ern­ment took of­fice in April. Mea­sures ranged from the out­right re­jec­tion of the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty Bill to unan­i­mous sup­port for the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice Act.

“Now you tell me, based on that ev­i­dence, how could the Prime Min­is­ter con­clude and make those state­ments about the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors,” she said in jus­ti­fy­ing why the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill was de­feat­ed in the Up­per House.