Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar sought the high ground quite en­er­get­i­cal­ly at the start of Mon­day's par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014.One key piton in the Prime Min­is­ter's ef­fort to climb above the furore that the bill had cre­at­ed was that she was al­low­ing a con­science vote for the mem­bers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship."I'm re­leas­ing all MPs of Cab­i­net from the doc­trine of col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on this mat­ter," the PM said in open­ing the de­bate.

That one-time free pa­per was meant to al­low any mem­ber of her par­ty to vote with­out reper­cus­sions for fail­ing to toe the par­ty line and to vote ac­cord­ing to their own judg­ment of the bill's mer­its or de­mer­its.Ne­ces­si­ty may well have been the moth­er of this in­no­va­tion, how­ev­er, as the COP had, on Sun­day, called on the Gov­ern­ment to post­pone vot­ing and re­fer the bill for fur­ther con­sul­ta­tions or de­lib­er­a­tion by a joint se­lect com­mit­tee, and sig­nalling the pos­si­bil­i­ty that at least some of its re­main­ing MPs would not vote for the bill.

That didn't stop COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har from vig­or­ous­ly de­fend­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­forms and the runoff pro­vi­sion in par­tic­u­lar as "a very poor but nec­es­sary sub­sti­tute for pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion."The COP's founder, Win­ston Dook­er­an, lis­ten­ing to his "in­ner voice," un­ex­pect­ed­ly spoke out loud and clear on the Gov­ern­ment bench­es against the bill and its im­ple­men­ta­tion. Both Mr Dook­er­an and Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan vot­ed against the bill, while Rodger Samuel ab­stained.

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