Gail Alexan­der

Con­sti­tu­tion­al ex­pert Dr Hamid Ghany says the run-off poll pro­pos­al was some­thing the Op­po­si­tion PNM in­tro­duced in its par­ty con­sti­tu­tion re­cent­ly and it was not an alien con­cept to the PNM.He was among mem­bers of the Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion who made rec­om­men­da­tions for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. He was re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to spe­cif­ic ques­tions on the var­i­ous pro­pos­als the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced Mon­day.

He said: "I think these mea­sures re­quire a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty and could have been done by any pre­vi­ous prime min­is­ter. I think the ques­tion is whether they had the po­lit­i­cal will or de­sire to do it. The term lim­its for prime min­is­ters was ad­vo­cat­ed by the ONR in 1981 and that de­bate went on for years."Re­call of MPs is an­oth­er is­sue de­bat­ed for years and is noth­ing new and the run-off as­pect isn't alien, as it was in­tro­duced by the PNM and de­tailed at a press con­fer­ence by PNM chair­man Franklin Khan and Ash­ton Ford at Bal­isi­er House."

He said the pro­pos­als for a run-off poll and oth­ers could be made with a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty, which was why they could have been done at any timeGhany not­ed the mea­sures would em­pow­er the elec­torate, en­sur­ing it got the MPs who re­ceived a ma­jor­i­ty of votes rather than ones who don't and would in­crease in­ter­est in elec­tions and reg­is­tra­tion."There's been great de­bate on first-past-the-post sys­tems and pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion was of­fered as an al­ter­na­tive.

"It's not be­ing put for­ward here but this is a fine-tun­ing of the first-past-the-post sys­tem and it's been em­barked up­on by ma­jor par­ties. The PNM in­tro­duced it for their par­ty poll but they didn't use it ful­ly, since their can­di­dates all won by 50 per cent of the votes in that in­ter­nal elec­tion," he said.For­mer pub­lic ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas, mean­while, said he agreed with the term lim­its for prime min­is­ters, an NAR pro­pos­al, and the prin­ci­ple of right of re­call though the lat­ter must be worked out to pre­vent abuse of the sys­tem

Du­mas said: "But I won­der if the run-off poll, in our sys­tem, might not have the ef­fect of elim­i­nat­ing third par­ties and this may not be best for democ­ra­cy."In 2007 the COP got many votes but no seats. In a run-off COP peo­ple may not vote, so where's the voice of the peo­ple of COP to be heard in this process?

"I am un­sure this is in the best in­ter­est of democ­ra­cy. It may cer­tain­ly elim­i­nate third par­ties and see coali­tion pol­i­tics mas­querad­ing as sin­gle par­ty pol­i­tics. We are re­vert­ing to the two-par­ty sys­tem that has be­dev­illed us all along."Al­so, while the first two ideas were in the PP man­i­festo, this is a new pro­pos­al and which should be dis­cussed with the pub­lic."