Cleav­on Raphael

T&T's elec­toral or con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, whichev­er way one may view it, took a quan­tum and in­ex­orable step for­ward fol­low­ing Mon­day's marathon sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, which end­ed the fol­low­ing morn­ing.I spent the en­tire ses­sion be­ing a ring­side spec­ta­tor, glued to my tele­vi­sion, al­ter­nat­ing by tun­ing in­to the ra­dio, to this once-in-a-life­time ex­pe­ri­ence as our na­tion's po­lit­i­cal lead­ers slugged it out in an ex­er­cise which pit­ted the two ma­jor par­ties against each oth­er.

De­spite the much tout­ed strat­e­gy by the op­po­si­tion that the mea­sures de­bat­ed and passed by the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion were aimed at si­lenc­ing "third" par­ties, the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty was most present through its leader, Jack Warn­er, who was once a favourite head hon­cho at the PP's in­ner cham­ber.

It was a most ex­cit­ing de­bate at times as one could ex­pect, rau­cous, live­ly, hu­mor­ous, light-heart­ed: but un­der­lin­ing all these highs and lows, a hall­mark of leg­isla­tive de­bates around the globe, what tran­spired was a rel­a­tive­ly smooth tran­si­tion from an en­trenched po­lit­i­cal sys­tem and the ush­er­ing in of a new or­der.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers