Gail Alexan­der

If Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Prakash Ra­mad­har is the "turkey who's pre­pared to vote for Thanks­giv­ing"– the runoff poll idea – then the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is not vot­ing for that, Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

"If af­ter he (Ra­mad­har) brought it to the Par­lia­ment and laid it as the way to go un­der the guise of na­tion­al in­ter­est, he has to go to his own par­ty and be told, 'We don't want it, stop it,' then that's for him!" Row­ley added while speak­ing in yes­ter­day's Par­lia­ment de­bate on Gov­ern­ment's pack­age of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form bills.

Row­ley said the runoff sys­tem was the re­al rea­son for the leg­is­la­tion be­cause of the Gov­ern­ment's con­cerns about the PNM's pow­er in a three-way po­lit­i­cal fight. He said the leg­is­la­tion was need­ed to re­in­force the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress's po­si­tion in such a sit­u­a­tion and treat with UNC's fear over the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

"But it puts the par­ty (UNC) in­ter­est over the na­tion­al in­ter­est," he added.

Row­ley said the UNC seg­ment of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) had dis­re­gard­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form Com­mis­sion's rec­om­men­da­tion that there should be po­lit­i­cal con­sen­sus on draft­ing any con­sti­tu­tion­al leg­is­la­tion bills and even some PP mem­bers didn't know how the cur­rent bills had arisen. He said the COP was say­ing they were not with the PP and the PNM had al­so been left out of the dis­cus­sions.

He said half the Cab­i­net didn't hear about the pro­pos­al un­til last week and Ra­mad­har, head of the Leg­isla­tive Re­view Com­mit­tee, had ques­tions on how it went to Cab­i­net.

The sit­u­a­tion, Row­ley not­ed, meant 15 PP MPs could change T&T's elec­toral sys­tem and jus­ti­fy it by say­ing the PNM had al­so had runoff polls, since once there was a quo­rum and Gov­ern­ment had one more than the Op­po­si­tion the leg­is­la­tion would be passed.

Row­ley said the sit­u­a­tion caused the PP to be "in a war" with CRC com­mis­sion mem­ber Dr Mer­le Hodge, since the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al had "at­tacked" her in his state­ments last week and should not have done so be­cause Hodge had raised the ques­tion of where the pro­pos­al came from.

How­ev­er, Row­ley had to apol­o­gise to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and with­draw an in­cor­rect state­ment he made about her on the Hodge is­sue.

Pro­pos­al re­ject­ed in UK

Row­ley called for the pop­u­la­tion to "bury" the PP with the pro­pos­al dur­ing elec­tions in the same way the UK elec­torate re­port­ed­ly re­ject­ed a sim­i­lar pro­pos­al from the Con­ser­v­a­tive Lib­er­al-De­mo­c­ra­t­ic coali­tion in the UK.

Call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to call the gen­er­al elec­tion now, he said Gov­ern­ment should ask the peo­ple what they want­ed and not speak for them.

Where­as dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the 18-18 elec­tion dead­lock years ago, in which the en­vi­ron­ment was dif­fer­ent, he claimed the pro­pos­al would now al­low 15 days of "elec­tion­eer­ing and cam­paign­ing" to oc­cur while par­ties await­ed re­sults of a runoff polls.

"It cre­ates the en­vi­ron­ment for bribery, splurg­ing and chaos to try and change the re­sults," he said, cit­ing sit­u­a­tions that oc­curred in the THA elec­tion and St Joseph by-elec­tion.

Row­ley said the PP on­ly re­sort­ed to say­ing they were do­ing things "be­cause the PNM did it too" when they were in trou­ble, but the PNM would not be tak­en in by the Prime Min­is­ter's "sweet talk."

He claimed she said pre­vi­ous­ly that the third par­ties held "dan­ger­ous po­ten­tial" and that was the dri­ving fac­tor be­hind the pro­posed runoff poll.

The Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­al for re­call of MPs in the fourth year, he ar­gued, was al­so "non­sense."

Say­ing the PP could not be trust­ed, he said: "Yes, we 'fraid all you and we have good rea­son to 'fraid you."

Chastis­ing Gov­ern­ment for call­ing a Par­lia­ment ses­sion dur­ing the "va­ca­tion" pe­ri­od, he said Gov­ern­ment had "am­bushed" the Op­po­si­tion and PNM MPs over­seas on va­ca­tion had to be rush­ing to air­ports to get home for the de­bate.