Opposition Leader claims Whistleblower Bill is bad law

OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar said the Opposition would not support the Whistleblower Protection Bill 2022 as it was unconstitutional – in denying an accused person access to a law court to defend their good name – and so was destined to be struck down by TT's law courts.

She began by complaining most MPs were restricted to 20 minutes to address the House of Representatives but yet it seemed any time the Prime Minister wished to talk at length he was given an extended time.

She congratulated Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal on being able to match this 90-minute speaking time in his rebuttal to Dr Rowley's piloting of the bill.

Persad-Bissessar said the Constitution was TT's supreme law, such that the courts could strike down any law seen to be unconstitutional. She said the bill was presented to the House before the relevant Joint Select Committee had finished working upon it. More so, she lamented it was a replica of a predecessor 2018 bill without a single comma changed, despite laws otherwise changing. This latter included a trend of courts now reading the Constitution to include its preamble which asserts a belief in rights, freedoms, justice and democracy.

While the courts support these preamble ideals, she complained that a clause in the bill prevents someone accused by a whistleblower from accessing the courts. Persad-Bissessar said Rowley should understand such a dilemma as the Integrity Commission had not given him a right to be heard in the Landate affair (where allegations were made that building materials for his wife's private housing development at Mason Hall, Tobago, were stored on the same site as materials for the construction Scarborough Hospital.)

"Every citizen has the right to be heard," Persad-Bissessar said.

She said the bill will not protect a reporting officer in a public department who is receiving a whistleblower's testimony.

While he/she will be immune from civil and criminal proceedings, Persad-Bissessar said the bill has no measures to protect his/her life.

She was concerned that the bill had "a very wide definition" of supposed improper conduct that someone could be a whistleblower on.

Again, she said the bill prevents someone from having a cause of action in court against a whistleblower to defend himself/herself.

Persad-Bissessar said the Chief Parliamentary Counsel had said the bill needed a three-fifths majority and was not reasonably justifiable in a democratic society, but she wondered at his current whereabouts and suggested he had been sidelined recently. Of the bill, she said, "It can be struck down. It will be struck down. This is bad law. This is very bad law."

Saying the bill tramples on basic rights and freedoms – as has been seen in other things recently – Persad-Bissessar said no special majority can save the bill.