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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Timeline of runoff provision

by

20140810

March 2, 2013- Cab­i­net ap­points a Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form to en­gage in pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.12 June 2013 - Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har says $4 mil­lion is spent on con­sul­ta­tions.

27 De­cem­ber 2013 - The Re­port of the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form Com­mis­sion (CRC) is sub­mit­ted to the Prime Min­is­ter.

30 April - A meet­ing is held and the CRC agrees to some pro­pos­als se­lect­ed from the re­port, to be tak­en to Par­lia­ment. The runoff is not dis­cussed.

9 Ju­ly - An­oth­er meet­ing is held to dis­cuss rec­om­men­da­tions. Com­mis­sion­er Mer­le Hodge says she was ab­sent from this meet­ing in which the runoff bal­lot is dis­cussed.

4 Au­gust - Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­veals that sec­ond bal­lot runoff vot­ing, right of re­call, fixed elec­tion dates and two term lim­its for Prime Min­is­ters will be part of the new con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

6 Au­gust - Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­scribes the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion as "dan­ger­ous" say­ing it had the po­ten­tial for a de­feat­ed par­ty to hold on to pow­er while sec­ondary elec­tions are held.

7 Au­gust - Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mis­sion Mem­ber, Dr Mer­le Hodge says the con­tentious runoff pro­pos­al was not in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship man­i­festo, the main con­sul­ta­tions around the coun­try or in the com­mis­sion's fi­nal re­port. She calls for the par­lia­men­tary de­bate to be post­poned.

8 Au­gust - At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says com­mis­sion­ers were "hand­some­ly paid" and at­tacks Hodge say­ing she was up­set by the de­feat of the Win­ston Dook­er­an fac­tion by the Ra­mad­har fac­tion in the Con­gress of the Peo­ple's (COP) in­ter­nal elec­tion.

8 Au­gust - For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj says the bill will trig­ger po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty in T&T if it be­comes law. He vows to mount a le­gal fight to stop the bill.

9 Au­gust - For­mer Sen­a­tor Sub­has Pan­day al­so pre­dicts dire con­se­quences for T&T if the bill is passed, say­ing it is an at­tack on democ­ra­cy.

9 Au­gust - Non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion Fix­in T&T mounts a protest out­side the Prime Min­is­ter's Philip­pine res­i­dence. They are chased off by gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers led by chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Prem­c­hand Sookoo.

10 Au­gust - Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice al­so calls for the post­pone­ment of the de­bate and is­sues a call for COP and TOP par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to with­draw their sup­port.

10 Au­gust - Con­gress of the Peo­ple calls for a de­lay in the vote of the leg­is­la­tion to al­low for wider analy­sis.


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