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Monday, July 7, 2025

PNM afraid of ma­jor­i­ty rule

PNM afraid of majority rule

by

20140812

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the po­lit­i­cal ma­tu­ri­ty of the coun­try and that the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is afraid of ma­jor­i­ty rule.

He made the com­ment dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate yes­ter­day on the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014 in Par­lia­ment.

In­sist­ing that the bill would be passed, Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment did not in­tend to fool any­one.

"This is no sham. We did not come here to fool any­body. We came to im­ple­ment a promise of re­form," he added.

He in­sist­ed that the Gov­ern­ment would pass the bill and said the cur­rent dis­sent­ing voic­es to the bill were com­ing from peo­ple who were afraid of change.

"What do you think will hap­pen, the sky will fall?" he ques­tioned.

Mooni­lal likened the de­bate to a runoff be­tween two sides, those who sup­port ma­jor­i­ty rule and those who sup­port mi­nor­i­ty rule.

"To sup­port the rule of a mi­nor­i­ty is wrong," Mooni­lal said.

He said the PNM was against the mea­sure be­cause it did not be­lieve it could win with ma­jor­i­ty rule.

"There are MPs who are here be­cause the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple that went to the polls de­cid­ed I don't want you but they find them­selves in Par­lia­ment, so that the will of the peo­ple who came out to vote, that will is de­feat­ed.

"There are Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment who are in the House who de­feat the will of the ma­jor­i­ty and they sit in the House for five years," he added.

He said the bill would mean the end of mi­nor­i­ty rule.

"A fun­da­men­tal as­pect of democ­ra­cy is to re­spect the will of the ma­jor­i­ty," he added.

Mooni­lal said he was shocked that mem­bers of the So­cial Move­ment Net­work had start­ed a cam­paign to stop the de­bate.

He said the Op­po­si­tion had fall­en in­to the be­lief that some­how ma­jor­i­ty rule was a green-eyed mon­ster, not­ing this was be­cause it had ben­e­fit­ted from mi­nor­i­ty rule.

Mooni­lal ar­gued that con­trary to some views, third par­ties would ac­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit from the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, adding that third par­ty pol­i­tics had been dead for 40 years.

"It is to­day that the third par­ties can breathe life be­cause in the first elec­tion every­body can go. At the sec­ond poll, you will have two and give peo­ple a sec­ond choice to vote."

He called on the Op­po­si­tion mem­bers to bring amend­ments that Gov­ern­ment could con­sid­er in­stead of be­ing "mer­chants of fear and doom and gloom."

He quipped that Row­ley was afraid he might be re­called as an MP as Gov­ern­ment had done a lot of work in his Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy.


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