Gail Alexan­der

Amid con­fir­ma­tion that some Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) MPs have raised con­cerns in Cab­i­net about Gov­ern­ment's runoff poll pro­pos­al, COP MP Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan yes­ter­day re­buked cer­tain re­marks by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan about Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mis­sion mem­ber Dr Mer­le Hodge's views on the is­sue.

In­for­ma­tion reach­ing T&T Guardian is that con­cerns on the pro­posed runoff poll were raised in Cab­i­net weeks ago - ahead of an­nounce­ment of the plan in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day - and up to Thurs­day al­so.Hodge was part of the CRC which made con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form rec­om­men­da­tions, hold­ing pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions since last year. A re­port was sub­mit­ted in De­cem­ber 2013 and an ad­den­dum to the re­port on Ju­ly 18.

The CRC, head­ed by COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har, al­so in­clud­ed Madam Jus­tice Am­ri­ka Ti­wary-Red­dy, Jus­tice Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour, Dr. Hamid Ghany and To­bag­on­ian busi­ness en­tre­pre­neur Car­los Dil­lon.

In Mon­day's ad­dress to Par­lia­ment on the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form pro­pos­als, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said mat­ters for CRC con­sid­er­a­tion in­clud­ed lim­i­ta­tions on terms of ser­vice by the prime min­is­ter, a right of re­call in re­spect of non-per­form­ing Par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives, "re­spect­ing the voic­es of the mi­nori­ties whilst giv­ing ef­fect to the will of the ma­jor­i­ty, mak­ing every vote count" and al­so for pro­vi­sion for fixed dates for gen­er­al elec­tions.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day al­so an­nounced pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, to be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment Mon­day, con­cern­ing two-term lim­its for prime min­is­ters, right of re­call for MPs and the runoff poll sys­tem to ap­ply where can­di­dates re­ceived less than 50 per cent of votes cast.The is­sue trig­gered neg­a­tive feed­back from var­i­ous quar­ters, in­clud­ing the Op­po­si­tion.

Some quar­ters of the pub­lic have ar­gued that the runoff pool pro­pos­al will in fact fur­ther en­trench a two-par­ty sys­tem and kill off the chances of small par­ties like the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP), Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) and even the COP.In a let­ter to the me­dia Thurs­day night, Hodge said the runoff pro­pos­al was in not in the PP's man­i­festo, or in main con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form con­sul­ta­tions around T&T, or the Com­mis­sion's re­port.

Dis­as­so­ci­at­ing her­self from the par­tic­u­lar pro­pos­al, Hodge added, "What the cur­rent dis­cus­sion proves is that be­fore it is tak­en to the fi­nal stage in Par­lia­ment, this Bill needs more and deep­er scruti­ny by the pub­lic, na­tion­wide, over a longer pe­ri­od than one week."Yes­ter­day, CRC mem­ber Dil­lon al­so echoed the call to Gov­ern­ment to hold off on de­bate.

2nd CRC mem­ber wants hold on move

Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mis­sion (CRC) mem­ber Car­los Dil­lon has be­come the sec­ond mem­ber of the body call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to hold its hand on the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014.In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Dil­lon said as a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion, whose re­mit was to "co-or­di­nate the con­sul­ta­tion ses­sions" through­out the coun­try and to sub­mit a re­port, he took re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the re­port, which was sub­se­quent­ly put out for pub­lic com­ment.

Dil­lon added, "In my view, the main con­cerns of the cit­i­zen­ry at this time in­clude the right of re­call of an MP, the method­ol­o­gy to be used for putting pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion in­to ef­fect and the tim­ing of bring­ing the bill to Par­lia­ment."The right of re­call of an MP and the ques­tion of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion were in­deed raised by the pub­lic dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tions and are re­flect­ed in the re­port.

"How­ev­er, the meth­ods of putting the right of re­call and the method­ol­o­gy for ef­fect­ing PR were not part of the pub­lic dis­cus­sion, for ac­cep­tance/re­jec­tion."Dil­lon said the tim­ing of bring­ing the bill to Par­lia­ment was not the func­tion of the com­mis­sion."As a con­se­quence of the furore sur­round­ing the bill," he sug­gest­ed, "good sense should pre­vail and that the tim­ing of de­bate on such a most im­por­tant mat­ter be looked at again."

CRC mem­ber Am­ri­ka Ti­wary-Red­dy, de­clin­ing com­ment on the pub­lic de­bate yes­ter­day, said she con­sid­ered the CRC's job done.She said the CRC had lis­tened to the pub­lic's re­spons­es and many meet­ings were held. Any queries should be ad­dressed to the CRC chair­man Prakash Ra­mad­har, she said.CRC mem­bers Dr Hamid Ghany and Jus­tice Se­bastien Ven­tour could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.