CARL DOUBLE TALKS IN THE SENATE

Carl Bethel is usually considered a straight up and down fellow and a good lawyer. What is perplexing though is what happened to him in the Senate in this incarnation of the FNM.  He seems to have become ever the mealy mouth.  Senator Bethel was making the case during the debate in the Senate on the Speech from The Throne on Thursday 12 October that the law can impose surcharges on Ministers of the Government who acted to spend publicly monies inconsistent with advice given by the Attorney General’s office or who had abused their public positions.  The Senate Leader for the Opposition Fred Mitchell got up and asked him if this were a rule which he seemed to be suggesting.  Then he backed off and said it was a precedent.  This means that whatever he accused the PLP of doing in supposedly issuing fixed term contracts with no break clauses was entirely within the discretion of the PLP Cabinet.  Yet there he was with his FNM propaganda line and if he had not been stopped, it would have simply slipped right by.  That says something about character.