And after boycotting the first two meetings, the PUP today announced that it will be joining the committee full force. And why is that? Well, it has become clear that the social partners and the opposition could control the majority vote! Briceno gave the party’s position today:….
Hon. John Briceno - PUP Party Leader
"We early have decided that we were not going to participate; but now that we have been informed by the other Senators in the social partners and by the clerk of the national assembly that the chairperson of that special senate select committee does not have a vote. Aldo Salazar has been elected as the chair, our party decided this morning that it is very important for us to participate again provided the other two senators from the social partners be the unions and the private sector participate. So we are going to be participating, I am going to be meeting with the three senators for us to decide who is going to represent us in that committee. But we're also appealing to the government and to the senate that we still believe that this senate select committee must have an adequate budget so that they can do the work properly."
"We also believe and we're going to hold the president of the senate to his word that the senate, this special senate select committee should be allowed to call in any and every and all witnesses that they think would be important to their investigation and move away from this nonsense that you can only call the people are in that report. What is more important? Us to decide just because you don't want to give into these two points we're not going to participate or should we at least give the process a chance."
"I think they did not do their homework properly because they thought the chair would have the casting vote so then they would have a majority but somehow somebody messed up and when they checked the standing orders of the senate it was and it was confirmed by the clerk of the national assembly that the chair does not have a vote, he will only have a casting vote. So in this case there are only 5 people that are voting, so Senator Rocke could vote as much as he wants with the government and if the other two social partners work along with our senator to do the right thing because it's not a matter that we want to go and hurt anyone but to be able to ask the right questions, to bring the right people in front of the senate to ask the proper questions so we could get to the bottom of it and that at the end of the day the senate can make the right set of recommendation."
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