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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Recouping on runoffs

by

20140830

The sun was in­deed shin­ing yes­ter­day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Thurs­day night quot­ed com­men­ta­tor Ralph Maraj's view that the "sun will still shine" if the Gov­ern­ment's con­sti­tu­tion re­form bill was passed.Per­sad-Bisses­sar utilised the quote by for­mer PNM op­po­nent, Maraj, to con­clude de­bate on the bill in the Sen­ate fol­low­ing which, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) ad­min­is­tra­tion's most con­tentious piece of leg­is­la­tion was passed with three In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors' sup­port.

Now that that his­toric de­bate is con­clud­ed, the var­i­ous im­pli­ca­tions–and cor­re­spond­ing reper­cus­sions–will be­gin un­fold­ing in the po­lit­i­cal mix. And mix is what the bill, par­tic­u­lar­ly the amend­ed runoff poll as­pect, will like­ly trig­ger.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dhanayshar Ma­habir's amend­ment con­cern­ing third-place fin­ish­ers, gave the Gov­ern­ment a much-need­ed life­line on the thorny is­sue of the bill's per­ceived threat to third par­ties and the con­se­quent im­pact on the PP's im­age. But it re­mains to be seen if the Gov­ern­ment will im­prove on its di­a­logue and com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the amend­ed leg­is­la­tion–af­ter ini­tial lax han­dling–be­fore amend­ments re­turn to the Low­er House.

In less than a year, the PP–in what­ev­er shape it faces the polls–will be told by the vot­ing pub­lic if the Prime Min­is­ter was right in trust­ing "the peo­ple" in pro­ceed­ing with the leg­is­la­tion, in the face of ac­cu­sa­tions of lack of spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion on the runoff, and in an en­vi­ron­ment where one of the Gov­ern­ment's main chal­lenges con­cerns lack of trust by some of the peo­ple.

Af­ter three days of de­bate in which sev­er­al In­de­pen­dents braved a gaunt­let of abuse out­side the Par­lia­ment from Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers–a clear­ly or­ches­trat­ed show–three-quar­ters of the In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ve­toed the bill. Clear in­dict­ment on their part that the end didn't jus­ti­fy the means. Some In­de­pen­dent po­si­tions were so strin­gent, the PM in her fi­nal re­ply, was clear­ly irked.

How­ev­er, the In­de­pen­dent bench demon­strat­ed it was ex­act­ly as its name de­notes, with the mixed sup­port for and against the bill and the moves by Ma­habir, Rolph Bal­go­b­in and David Small to strike out and at­tempt to work with the is­sue on the ta­ble and re­fine it to a slight­ly more eq­ui­table for­mu­la. Time will tell if it in­deed is.

Term lim­its for the Prime Min­is­ter will mean Per­sad-Bisses­sar will, un­like Dr Er­ic Williams and Patrick Man­ning, nev­er have mul­ti­ple terms if the PP sur­vives gen­er­al elec­tions. The PNM may suf­fer no such fate since it in­tends to re­peal the bill if it wins in 2015.Pro­vi­sion for re­call of an MP at half-term mark will en­sure–at least for this elec­tion–par­ties, now em­bark­ing on can­di­date se­lec­tion, will have to ex­am­ine nom­i­nees much deep­er and those of­fer­ing them­selves will have to en­sure they can "cut it."

The amend­ed runoff poll plan, which may be per­ceived as a sop to the third-par­ty elim­i­na­tion dilem­ma, may im­prove third fin­ish­ers' chances (as op­posed to none in the orig­i­nal forced-choice sce­nario) though it won't nec­es­sar­i­ly out­law the po­lit­i­cal horse-trad­ing that was ex­pect­ed with the orig­i­nal bill. But the land­scape dic­tates that would have oc­curred with or with­out the bill.

The PNM whose ob­jec­tions to the bill were re­in­forced via a sev­enth con­tri­bu­tion–in the sur­prise move of Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds sub­sti­tut­ing for Camille Robin­son-Reg­is–has al­ready telegraphed its next prong of at­tack on the bill.

This in­volves con­cerns that the amend­ed runoff plan (in­volv­ing 25 per cent of the votes for third fin­ish­ers) would negate the foun­da­tion of the runoff plan (that can­di­dates must re­ceive 50 per cent of the votes) and this would re­turn to a sit­u­a­tion of mi­nor­i­ty MPs. One PNM view al­so in­sin­u­at­ed Ma­habir's amend­ment gave voice to a sug­ges­tion of the PM.

As much as the PP has to re­gain pub­lic trust on var­i­ous fronts, the PNM will al­so have to re­coup, af­ter demon­stra­tions out­side the Par­lia­ment in­volv­ing sup­port­ers have cloud­ed the par­ty's im­age.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who pegged her po­lit­i­cal stocks on the leg­is­la­tion, has made her mark pi­lot­ing the bill suc­cess­ful­ly so far. It re­mains to un­fold whether in mak­ing his­to­ry in ef­fect­ing elec­toral re­form if it will fly, or if her ground-break­ing move will put her ad­min­is­tra­tion in­to po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry books via less dis­tin­guished cir­cum­stances.


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