Former Independent Senator Sunity Maharaj tells David Abdulah during his Tuesday talk Program that as an independent senator she was never coerced. She says it's no good for government to attack the independent bench.
00:00Former independent senator and career journalist Suniti Maharaj on election night expressed a major concern.
00:08I hope that the new government will find that it's not necessary to get into a row with the president.
00:19This has now become the center of public discussion with the UNC launching what is being called an attack on the independence of independent senators.
00:29Whom the president appoints.
00:31That was in my mind that night because there had been precedent of an antagonistic position by the UNC over Christine Kangaloo's appointment.
00:46As a person who had served in a PNM cabinet, you know, very much entrenched in the PNM, they did not consider her fit to become president.
01:02A moot point, Maharaj says, especially when the UNC appointed a president straight from its cabinet.
01:08But when it comes to the independent bench, she says lobbying does understandably exist.
01:14In my time, both sides would lobby you, you know, try to bring you, bring to your attention information they think you may not know.
01:22And you mean, you read everything and then you and you take a decision in your own, in your own mind as to where you would fall.
01:30But Maharaj maintained during her time there was no coercion from the president's office.
01:36I can say without contradiction that not once in the period I was a senator did the president ever send a message to me or say anything to me.
01:48In fact, we had no contact except once when at the beginning I asked to see her because I really wanted her to know who she was putting in the Senate.
01:56She says it does no good to attack the independent bench which now comprises of people who serve in spite of the barrage of public scrutiny and attacks, particularly with the advent of social media.
02:09Weighing in on the new power in town, Maharaj says one thing should not be assumed.
02:15The fact of being elected has been taken to mean that everything I want to do is already approved, is pre-approved by the electorate, by the public.
02:24That's a flawed idea which can lead a government into a dangerous consequence.
02:30If you don't recognize that you have to negotiate everything all the time throughout your administration, that's when you get into trouble.
02:38Because you will find at first your supporters are with you and they are fresh from victory and they are loud and they are saying they're defending you.
02:51But as time passes and people don't feel consulted or people object to certain things or they see the reality of certain things and impact on them, they begin to fall away.
03:00And you get less and less until you find yourself in a lot of trouble with the very electorate.
03:06And the biggest promise and the most difficult to deliver, she says, is relative to crime.
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