Senate president refutes claim of dissing disabled member

A social media post from a People’s National Party account dubbed “Parliament disabling persons with disabilities” has reportedly left the staff of the legislature fuming.

President of the Senate Tom Tavares-Finson told his colleagues in the Upper House yesterday that the post has brought the office of the clerk and members of the staff of Parliament into disrepute.

At the beginning of the sitting of the Upper House yesterday, Tavares-Finson said he observed a post on Instagram featuring Opposition senators Peter Bunting and Dr Floyd Morris making an allegation against the staff of Parliament.

“The essence of the post suggests that the staff of the Parliament have failed in their duties to the responsibilities which they have to each and every member of the Senate to ensure that they are given information to which they are obliged to have,” the Senate president told lawmakers.

But in a terse response later in the sitting, Leader of Opposition Business Peter Bunting hit back, saying the video was not aimed at the staff of Parliament but the president.

“The edited clip the president referred to had no intention of criticising the clerk or the staff. It was entirely aimed at criticising you, Mr President,” Bunting declared.

Tavares-Finson said that for the “discomfiture that has been done to the staff, I will apologise to them”.

He indicated that the post conveyed a message that was “disingenuous to the extreme”.

The Senate president insisted that the message that was sent to the public was that the clerk to the Houses and her officers had failed a particular senator with a disability who required information to be presented to him in a particular format.

No ‘malice’

Tavares-Finson commented on the process involved in preparing information on bills and other documents so that it could be formatted for use by Morris, who is blind.

He, however, conceded that there were instances when complaints had been made that the documents were not presented to Morris on time or that there had been technical difficulties.

The Senate president said that those issues did not arise out of “malice or ill intent”.

At the November 5 sitting of the Senate, Morris had complained that he did not receive the Road Traffic Amendment Act in the appropriate format for him to carry out his legislative role.

“I take my role as a senator very seriously. When I get a bill, I have to make sure that it is in the appropriate format for me to read, cross-reference and match with other legislation, and importantly, the Constitution of Jamaica,” he said last week.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com