Derek Achong

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has dis­missed al­le­ga­tions by Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form Com­mis­sion (CRC) mem­ber Dr Mer­le Hodge that the con­tro­ver­sial runoff bal­lot pro­posed in the Con­sti­tu­tion­al (Amend­ment) Bill 2014 was not part of the dis­cus­sion dur­ing the com­mis­sion's in­ter­ac­tion with the pub­lic or in its re­port.

In a let­ter sent to the me­dia late Thurs­day, Hodge, au­thor, ac­tivist and re­tired Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) lec­tur­er, called on the Gov­ern­ment to hold its hand on the bill and de­scribed the runoff polls for MPs pro­posed in the draft leg­is­la­tion as "an­ti-de­mo­c­ra­t­ic" and a con­tra­dic­tion of "the prin­ci­ple of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion."

But speak­ing a press con­fer­ence at his St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan ques­tioned the ba­sis for Hodge's crit­i­cism, as he said the pro­vi­sion was in­deed part of a re­port to Gov­ern­ment pre­pared by the com­mis­sion."One would ex­pect and hope that be­fore they put their sig­na­tures on that doc­u­ment there would have been ma­ture re­flec­tion, care­ful de­lib­er­a­tion and gen­uine dis­cus­sion amongst these per­sons who were ap­point­ed and paid, I might add, to serve on that com­mis­sion," Ram­lo­gan said.

Ram­lo­gan al­so sug­gest­ed Hodge's state­ment might have been mo­ti­vat­ed by her per­son­al po­lit­i­cal views."It's a mat­ter of pub­lic record that Mrs (sic) Hodge was a sup­port­er of Win­ston Dook­er­an while I was part of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), be­cause she ap­peared on the plat­form in sup­port of Mr Dook­er­an."I don't know if there is any mer­it to the claim that this is a hang­over from the in­ter­nal elec­tion cam­paign in 2010 that did not go too well for the Dook­er­an fac­tion as op­posed to the Ra­mad­har fac­tion," Ram­lo­gan said.

The AG re­it­er­at­ed his sup­port for the leg­is­la­tion, which he said was long over­due, as the rec­om­men­da­tions of sev­er­al oth­er sim­i­lar com­mis­sions had been ig­nored by pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments for the past 40 years.

The pro­vi­sion was first re­vealed ear­li­er this week by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar when she tabled the leg­is­la­tion, which al­so in­cludes a two-term lim­it for prime min­is­ters and right of re­call for MPs, dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion at the open­ing of the fifth and fi­nal ses­sion of the tenth Par­lia­ment. The bill is to be de­bat­ed on Mon­day.

If passed by a sim­ply ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment, MPs who win by less than 50 per cent of votes cast in the con­stituen­cy will have to par­tic­i­pate in a runoff poll. The sec­ondary poll will take place with­in two weeks of the main elec­tion, with vot­ers de­cid­ing be­tween the two can­di­dates who re­ceived the most votes in the ini­tial count.

MPs will be vul­ner­a­ble

Ram­lo­gan said the runoff polls were a di­rect and log­i­cal con­se­quence of the pro­posed re­call of non-per­form­ing MPs and was need­ed to com­ple­ment it."You can­not give a right of re­call with so many MPs elect­ed with a mi­nor­i­ty of the votes cast. They will be vul­ner­a­ble to be re­called," Ram­lo­gan said.Ques­tioned on the pos­si­bil­i­ty that few­er vot­ers might par­tic­i­pate in the runoff poll as op­posed to the ini­tial gen­er­al elec­tion, Ram­lo­gan said it was un­like­ly.

"We are yet to find such a case in the world from our re­search. It is al­ways you get a larg­er turnout," he said.