The 45-day amnesty being granted by the Government to persons who say they need time to fulfill their obligations to pay their traffic ticket fines will begin on Monday.

The Senate passed the Bill on Friday, but not before a very lively debate which suggests that there is still a lot of energy existing in that “upper” chamber, despite the frequent, partisan-flavoured discussions on the Bills and the departure of Mark Golding and Angela Brown Burke.

It was interesting that the Bill which drew most attention was probably the most insignificant, as Government senators strenuously supported the Road Traffic (Temporary Ticket Amnesty) (Number 2) Act, 2017 which introduces the second amnesty for the year for persons still holding expired road traffic tickets since September, 2010.

Opposition senator Lambert Brown used the opportunity to accuse the Government of attempting to turn the Senate into a “rubber stamp”, by introducing a Bill with an urgent time limit for implementation.

He was referring to the fact that with the new amnesty set to start on Monday, November 27, the Government could not afford an amendment in the Senate which would have required that the Bill return to the House of Representatives on Tuesday for approval of the Senate’s amendments.

He said that the same tactics were used with the previous amnesty Bill in July, with the Bill being debated on the same day that it was passed.

“That Bill was tabled on the same day and we were required to debate on the same day,” he argued. He claimed that some members of the Senate had surrendered their right to dissent and subject themselves to the request of the party whip.

“Has the Senate become a rubber stamp for Cabinet, for the House of Representatives… we on this side do not accept that the Senate should be a rubber stamp,” he stated.

He said that the Opposition senators were loyal to the oath they took to serve the Jamaican people, and suggested that what was needed was not an amnesty, but enforcement of the law.

“Enforce the law. There are people with a thousand tickets. The reality is that giving a bly only lead to another bly.

Jamaican people are smart, they’ll wait you out. And I will tell you what they will say next year January: They goin’ say it was Christmas. They goin’ say it was tamarind season,” he stated.

Senator Brown, who rose after his trade union colleague and Government senator Kavan Gayle had made his input, probably felt that Gayle’s argument that the new amnesty could be misinterpreted as an irresponsible “bly” for the motorists meant that there was some support for amending the Bill on the Government benches, which definitely would have affected Monday’s planned start of the amnesty.

Gayle, who was a member of the Joint Select Committee (JSC) of Parliament which reviewed the original Road Traffic Act in 2015, said that although he would give his support to the extension this time, he was still concerned about the delay in tabling the redrafted RTA Bill, and hoped that it would be implemented before another amnesty could be considered.

However, minister of state in the Ministry of National Security Pearnel Charles Jr, who piloted the Bill, gave an undertaking that the new RTA Bill would be tabled with zero tolerance and warned motorists to make good on the payments before the Government “draw the line in the sand” with its implementation.

Government senator Ransford Braham dismissed any indication that he may also be having second thoughts about the new amnesty, stating that he was comforted by the fact that the new draft of the Road Traffic Act was imminent.

He said that he was comforted that the new RTA would have provisions dealing with situations where people who gather tickets willy-nilly, or just collect them as trophies, that certain automatic provisions will come into place to deal with that type of situation.

“I am comforted by the fact that I am advised that Government is working to deal with the situation with the database and the data collection process,” Braham said.

He also noted that, unlike Senator Brown, he felt that the new NIDS Act would assist the traffic ticket system, as motorists would no longer be able to “fool the system as others have done, even at this time.

“There are persons out there who have driver’s licences that do not belong to them … it forged. They have insurance certificates that are forged.

They have an entire bandooloo system that when tickets are given (to them) they know that it is given in the names of others; persons who are dead, persons who have migrated, names that they have concocted themselves on the spur of the moment and have gotten others to prepare.

So the laxity of the accountability system facilitates this process,” Braham stated.

“If we fix the accountability system, the likelihood of us coming back here with a similar (amnesty) Bill would be significantly reduced, if not eliminated,” he added.

Senator Braham also felt that what should happen was for the Government to get the new Road Traffic Bill in, get the NIDS Bill rolling and, thirdly, “we should, in fact, put in the resources so that we can then track those who are not obeying and following the system”.

He said that in the meantime there was nothing wrong in seeking to collect the outstanding payments.

But Opposition member, Senator Damion Crawford insisted that unlike Braham he is not comforted and he wasn’t against “eating a food”, but that it needed some nutrition.