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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Doing the math

by

20140817

Giv­en its re­jec­tion by the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, the pas­sage of the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014 "ir­re­gard­less" means that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, which on­ly got 43 per cent of the vote in the May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion, can use this to change the coun­try's Con­sti­tu­tion in its favour. It should be not­ed that a ma­jor­i­ty of the COP MPs and the par­ty's Na­tion­al Coun­cil did not sup­port Mon­day's vote.

The irony of the bill is fur­ther com­pound­ed by the runoff pro­vi­sion which seeks to en­sure that MPs earn at least 50 per cent of the vote. The UNC has on­ly ever once got to the 50 per cent mark in its his­to­ry. This was in the dis­put­ed 2000 elec­tion, marred by al­le­ga­tions of vot­er padding, and in which the par­ty held on to of­fice while fight­ing two elec­tion pe­ti­tions.

In that De­cem­ber 2000 poll, the UNC won 19 seats with 51.75 per cent of the vote, on­ly to im­plode in less than a year as in­ter­nal bick­er­ing, a fea­ture of every gov­ern­ment in which it has been in­volved, led to its los­ing of­fice in less than a year.

Bar­ring the 1956 elec­tions that saw par­ty pol­i­tics come of age and which the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment won with 38.7 per cent of the vote, every elec­tion from 1961 to 1981 saw the PNM win­ning by up­wards of 50 per cent. And al­though the PNM has fall­en be­low that thresh­old in elec­tions since 1986, the PNM un­der Patrick Man­ning did man­age to win the 2002 gen­er­al elec­tion, which broke the 18-18 dead­lock, by win­ning 50.89 per cent of the vote and 21 seats.

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


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