Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

As de­bate be­gins to­day on the con­tro­ver­sial Con­sti­tu­tion­al (Amend­ment Bill) 2014, the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) is call­ing on Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) and To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion for the Peo­ple (TOP) par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to with­draw their sup­port for the bill.Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence held at the MSJ's head­quar­ters at San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, MSP po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah said the UNC can­not pass the bill, if the COP and TOP MPs take a col­lec­tive de­ci­sion to vote against it.

"This bill runs counter to the pol­i­cy of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the pres­ence of a third par­ty in an elec­tion. We are is­su­ing an open let­ter to all mem­bers of par­lia­ment, five from the COP and two from TOP, to put coun­try first over their par­ty's in­ter­est and vote against the bill," Ab­du­lah said.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress has 19 MPs. The D'Abadie/O'Meara seat was de­clared va­cant on Au­gust 4, af­ter the res­ig­na­tion of Anil Roberts and the Ch­agua­nas West seat is oc­cu­pied by Jack Warn­er, the chair­man of the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty.He added that the UNC did not have the req­ui­site ma­jor­i­ty to pass the bill.In the let­ter Ab­du­lah said the COP and TOP MPs must con­sid­er the dan­ger­ous ef­fects of the bill.Ab­du­lah al­so said that the runoff was nev­er dis­cussed in the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions.

"At the meet­ing of Ju­ly 9, there was a dis­cus­sion about this, which found its way in­to a doc­u­ment on 13th Ju­ly marked pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial. It was an in­ter­nal doc­u­ment and all of a sud­den it moved from pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial on Au­gust 8 to be­ing an ad­den­dum," Ab­du­lah said.

Say­ing the runoff bal­lot must be open to pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion, Ab­du­lah ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of abus­ing her of­fice. He said if the bill is passed in the Low­er House, the MSJ will lob­by for sen­a­tors to re­ject the bill in the Sen­ate. He al­so said the MSJ will join oth­er so­cial groups to stop the bill.Ab­du­lah said two pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion fo­rums will be held on Tues­day in Port of Spain and Wednes­day in San Fer­nan­do to ex­plain to cit­i­zens the dan­gers of the bill.