The reason Local Government Minister Rennie Dumas is in the
Senate is in order to annoy Opposition Senator Robin Montano.
That’s the only conclusion it was possible to reach after
witnessing Mr Dumas’ performance on Tuesday afternoon.
Mr Dumas has now perfected the art, as he showed in debate
on a motion brought by Mr Montano.
His usual tactics include refusing to answer questions, objecting
to questions put to other Government members, heckling, and
generally doing his fair share to lower the tone. But on Tuesday
it was his turn to speak.
The motion itself, it should be noted, seemed designed to
provoke the Government.
It was critical of a series of advertisements put out by the
Government last year to get people to ask their MPs to vote
for the police reform bills, which cost $1.9 million of taxpayers’
money. (The tactic didn’t work, and the three bills were
defeated in the Lower House last July).
The motion asked the House, not unreasonably, to condemn the
use of state funds for political purposes.
But, coming from Mr Montano, it didn’t end with that
modest request, but suggested that the ads, since they incited
citizens to secure opposition votes “by intimidation,
pressure or otherwise,” might constitute contempt of
Parliament—hardly a conclusion with which the Government
might agree.
Furthermore, the Senate should recommend that the people responsible
be made to pay back the Treasury out of their own pockets.
Mr Dumas began as he meant to go on, by calling Mr Montano
a parliamentary illiterate.
Opposition Senate leader Wade Mark was so startled by the
bluntness of this insult that, having risen to object, he
was at a loss for words, and could only stammer that it was
a bit much.
Senate president Dr Linda Baboolal agreed. This was something
of a setback for Mr Dumas, much of whose speech (and he was
reading it) was a diatribe against Mr Montano and had to be
hastily modified.
He regrouped and went on: the motion was the product of a
malevolent mind, of churlish, uninformed analysis, and so
on.
Mr Montano simmered quietly nevertheless, until Mr Dumas accused
the Opposition of being glad the murder rate had skyrocketed.
“He’s called me all kinds of names, and that’s
okay,” he said.
But Mr Dumas was not to question his or his colleagues’
patriotism.
After that it was downhill all the way.
Five women had been sworn in as temporary senators that day,
four to replace absentees on the government side, and one
Independent. Temporary senators sit meekly in their places
until called upon to vote, and the number of these silent
observers was unusually high that day, but even so, this was
a rowdy and bad-tempered debate, with further exchanges later
between the prim but belligerent Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan
of the UNC and a snappish senate president.
The laid-back Mr Mark could interject gleefully from time
to time, “Stretch, you have it wrong,” but Mr Dumas
had succeeded in getting under Mr Montano’s skin.
But when he said, “I’ve heard them say with my own
two ears, ‘We’ll make this country ungovernable…’”
Mr Mark and Mr Montano both exploded.
“In this House?” Mr Mark wanted to know.
“Nobody on this side said it,” said Mr Montano.
“Either prove it or withdraw.”
Hansard record
Mr Dumas offered to provide them with the Hansard record,
but he wouldn’t have found it there, for it was said
at the Caroni Hindu School, by Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday.
At a UNC Monday night forum on October 13, 2003, Mr Panday
said, “We must make this country ungovernable. When it
becomes ungovernable, only then will Manning and the PNM sit
down and talk constitutional reform.”
But if there was some substance to that claim by Mr Dumas,
there was none to the sole argument he offered in reply to
the motion, once he had tired of abusing the UNC.
It was not enough to leave the decision-making role in the
hands of Parliament; steps should be taken to get the population
involved. The ads were part of this enlightened democratic
strategy and were merely for public information.
Here Mr Dumas parted company with the truth.
The ads did contain summaries of the bills. But they also
said things like: “The Anti-Crime legislation coming
before Parliament…is crucial to our future...if you want
an effective Police Service geared for the job of winning
the War on Crime…Contact your MP. Demand that they vote
for this legislation. For the sake of our future…Let
the bills pass.”
Mr Montano’s motion, then, had a firm basis in fact:
the ads were political, aimed to put pressure on UNC MPs and
should not have been paid for with state funds. But rights
and wrongs are not always a factor in parliamentary debate.
And there was no chance of common sense, moderation or restraint
winning the day in a debate in which both Mr Dumas and Mr
Montano took an active part.
