And, finally tonight, the UDP has sent a letter of complaint to the President of the Senate in advance of its next meeting a week from tomorrow.
Senator Mike Peyrefitte says - as he has told us before - that certain government business cannot be introduced in the Senate because it has no Ministers.
This absence was created when Eamon Courtney - who is the leader of government business resigned as Senator.
Peyrefitte spoke to the press today via Zoom about what he perceives as a fundamental difficulty with the absence of a Minister:
Mike Peyrefitte, UDP Senator
"Public business, government business, motions and money businesses, in my view, cannot be moved through the Senate by a regular Senator. You must be a minister. Therefore, with the Senate meeting scheduled for February 8th and no minister there, I have written to the president of the Senate to indicate to her that we have an issue."
"I don't care if it was done a thousand times before the wrong way. Bad precedent doesn't make good law. Doesn't matter by whom it was done. I am saying that we are here now. We are present now in the Senate now."
"And certain things cannot move without a minister. I'm alerting the president to this fact because I plan to raise it in between now and February 8th, the prime minister doesn't put a minister in the Senate."
"That they, if they still insist on proceeding, I will remind the president in session. And whatever the president rules, she rules. If she rules that no, let's proceed, well, then we proceed. And then the United Democratic Party reserves its options."
Jules Vasquez
"The UDP's ranked hypocrisy on this because this is something the UDP did with Doug Singh not long ago, quite recently. And so here it is again. I mean, you all are the ones who establish the precedents."
Mike Peyrefitte, UDP Senator
"It cannot be ranked hypocrisy."
"If I already told you that it was wrong then, and it would be wrong now. And I wasn't in the Senate then, or I would have pointed that out. I wasn't in government then. I played no part in the National Assembly at that time."
"So I don't see how that applies to me or how that can be hypocritical on my part. I am telling you what we have before us is something that's not correct. And even if it was done by the UDP before, it was not correct then."
"Don't blame me because the PUP didn't have vigilant people looking at the Senate standing orders."
Peyrefitte has not stated what the UDP plans to do if the situation is not rectified to its satisfaction.
