Yvonne Ba­boolal

Dis­miss­ing six pre­vi­ous at­tempts at con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form by dif­fer­ent ad­min­is­tra­tions, Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har said this time the Gov­ern­ment was "re­al­ly se­ri­ous" in its en­deav­our.Ra­mad­har made the dis­clo­sure Mon­day at the start of the first of 17 na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tions on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form which will be held through­out T&T.

Seat­ed at the head ta­ble at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, with com­mis­sion­ers–Dr Hamid Ghany, Jus­tice Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour, Dr Mer­le Hodge, Jus­tice Am­ri­ka Ti­wary-Red­dy and Car­los Dil­lion–from the tourism sec­tor, he ad­dressed a full hall of peo­ple, many from the St Au­gus­tine and Tu­na­puna ar­eas, who went to air their views on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.The min­is­ter de­scribed this at­tempt at con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form as "his­toric."

"This is his­toric. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship came in on sev­er­al promis­es, one of them be­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. No pre­vi­ous at­tempt to re­form the con­sti­tu­tion has re­al­ly been se­ri­ous," he added.Ra­mad­har said that was an at­tempt to cre­ate new rules and struc­tures in the Con­sti­tu­tion and the supreme law of the land must come from the peo­ple.

"I be­lieve the supreme law of the land must come from the peo­ple. We are not here to make speech­es but to lis­ten. Feel free to speak your mind, with re­spect. Con­sid­er us friends," he added.The min­is­ter said in ad­di­tion to the 17 con­sul­ta­tions, the views of in­ter­est groups, po­lit­i­cal par­ties and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions was al­so be­ing sought. Co­me­di­an Er­rol Fa­bi­en, chair­man of the process, said views al­so could be for­ward­ed on­line.

He said he was "ex­treme­ly hap­py" about the out­come of the first con­sul­ta­tion.He added: "There were wide rang­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the floor. Cit­i­zens have been com­plain­ing about how the coun­try is run."Un­less you change the rules, the game will be played the same way. This is a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to change the rules."