Alexander defends PM, questions independence of Senate bench

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der has pushed back against the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) af­ter it called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to with­draw re­marks she made about in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors fol­low­ing their re­jec­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill.

The con­tro­ver­sy stems from the Prime Min­is­ter’s crit­i­cism of the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors who vot­ed against the bill. Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed them as “sa­tan­ic” and “de­mon­ic” and said her Gov­ern­ment would no longer ac­cept amend­ments pro­posed by in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors on leg­is­la­tion.

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In a state­ment yes­ter­day, LATT ex­pressed con­cern over the re­marks and urged the Prime Min­is­ter to re­tract them.