Gail Alexan­der

De­spite the lack of sup­port from Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) MPs–Win­ston Dook­er­an and Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan–the Gov­ern­ment's con­tro­ver­sial Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill was passed with amend­ments in the Low­er House at 4.04 am yes­ter­day and is ex­pect­ed to be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate lat­er this month.

The Gov­ern­ment on­ly re­quires one In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor's vote for the bill to be passed in the Sen­ate. This was in­di­cat­ed yes­ter­day by gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials af­ter marathon de­bate on the bill and its con­tentious runoff poll pro­pos­al.De­bate be­gan at 10.30 am Mon­day and end­ed ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, with the two COP MPs break­ing Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) ranks in vot­ing against the bill.

Wind­ing up de­bate around 3 am yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Sen­ate de­bate will pro­vide a built-in de­lay on the bill and fur­ther con­sul­ta­tion, in­clud­ing checks and bal­ances.

"So it's not all done to­day. Sen­ate will take up the next step and the de­bate will con­tin­ue. First the Low­er House will de­cide on this, sec­ond­ly the Sen­ate will de­cide and third­ly the peo­ple will de­cide," the PM added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added three amend­ments to the bills to cov­er con­cerns ex­pressed in the de­bate.PP of­fi­cials said the Sen­ate de­bate may be around Au­gust 26, al­low­ing time for more dis­cus­sions, and the Sen­ate will de­bate oth­er bills next Tues­day.Speak­ing around 5 am yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said Gov­ern­ment on­ly re­quired the vote of one In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor in the Sen­ate to pass the bill, adding he be­lieved Gov­ern­ment will ob­tain the nec­es­sary sup­port.

Yes­ter­day, Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­ate leader Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said:

"We will con­tin­ue to op­pose the bill in the Sen­ate. We no­ticed one amend­ment was made–on the ap­point­ment of a leader whose par­ty has won 21 seats–which was what we had sought to pre­vent, any sleight of hand."How­ev­er, we are still con­cerned the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mit­tee asked that noth­ing be done un­til pub­lic com­ment was re­ceived and this still needs to be done since peo­ple didn't get to ex­am­ine the bills.

"Al­so, we are con­cerned the CRC rec­om­mend­ed T&T should re­tain the first-past-the-post sys­tem and Gov­ern­ment has moved away from the re­port."Robin­son-Reg­is added: "We trust the In­de­pen­dents will do their du­ty and vote in ac­cor­dance with the peo­ple's wish­es."

Amend­ments

�2 Make it clear the Pres­i­dent has pow­er to ap­point as prime min­is­ter the leader of the par­ty with 21 and more seats af­ter elec­tion.

�2 Al­low a three-day time­frame for the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion to elim­i­nate mis­chief and ver­i­fy sig­na­tures in ap­pli­ca­tions to re­call MPs.

�2 Lim­it the num­ber of re­calls in a con­stituen­cy.

How the vote went

For: 23 PP MPs

Against:

PNM MPs: Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, Kei­th Row­ley, Nile­ung Hy­po­lite, Don­na Cox, Colm Im­bert, Amery Browne, Ali­cia Hospedales, Fitzger­ald Jef­frey,Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Joanne Thomas, Paula Gopee- Scoon

COP: Win­ston Dook­er­an and Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan.

ILP: Jack Warn­er.

Ab­stained

COP: Rodger Samuel

Ab­sent:

Pa­tri­cia McIn­tosh and Patrick Man­ning.

COP split

In the de­bate, Dook­er­an and Seep­er­sad-Bachan vot­ed with ten Op­po­si­tion PNM MPs and the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty's Jack Warn­er against the bill af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar freed her MPs from the gov­ern­ment whip to al­low a con­science vote, fol­low­ing the COP's call last Sun­day for post­pone­ment of the de­bate and more con­sul­ta­tion.The two COP votes plus the PNM and ILP's to­talled 14 against the bill to PP MPs' 23 votes for it.COP MP Rodger Samuel ab­stained.

COP MPs were split on the is­sue, with par­ty leader Prakash Ra­mad­har and Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas vot­ing for the bill, de­spite Dou­glas' ex­pressed con­cerns over the bill. Samuel did not speak.The sit­u­a­tion re­duced Gov­ern­ment's 26-seat ma­jor­i­ty to 23 for the vote.For­mer COP leader Dook­er­an, speak­ing around 9.30 pm on Mon­day, said he was "tor­ment­ed" on his choice as he felt the runoff poll was trou­bling and if he vot­ed for it, his ma­jor con­cern was he would be vot­ing against pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, which he favoured.

Dook­er­an said he could not wait for the Prime Min­is­ter's promised PR bill, since he would be buy­ing "cat in bag."He felt the runoff would de­ny ac­cess to de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights and was the most dan­ger­ous part of the pro­pos­al.He said he told Cab­i­net col­leagues of his con­cerns in a five-page doc­u­ment sug­gest­ing joint se­lect com­mit­tee con­sul­ta­tions but was "dis­ap­point­ed" and would seek an au­di­ence with the PM on it in the fu­ture.

PNM MPs en­cour­aged, ap­plaud­ed and thumped their desks in ap­proval as Dook­er­an spoke, urg­ing him to "take back the COP."Speak­ing af­ter 2 am, Seep­er­sad-Bachan, while con­grat­u­lat­ing the PM and Ra­mad­har for tak­ing steps to­wards re­form, said more con­sul­ta­tions were nec­es­sary and the runoff poll would get rid of third par­ties.She said it was a di­rect counter to the PR sys­tem and asked what was wrong with say­ing the PP had erred and would re­turn to con­sul­ta­tion. She al­so re­ceived PNM sup­port.

Dou­glas, at 2.30 am, con­grat­u­lat­ed the PM for al­low­ing a con­science vote but pro­posed putting "the whole thing on hold" or re­mov­ing the anx­i­ety-caus­ing runoff pro­pos­al.He too urged more con­sul­ta­tion, say­ing peo­ple need­ed to un­der­stand the is­sues, or would be­come sus­pi­cious, and should be in­volved in law­mak­ing.

End of the de­bate

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­dressed their con­cerns in her wind-up ad­dress, adding T&T must be a team-play­er so­ci­ety.In the sub­se­quent vote, how­ev­er, Seep­er­sad-Bachan and Dook­er­an both said "no."When Seep­er­sad-Bachan pro­posed an amend­ment to re­move the runoff poll, Speak­er Wade Mark said on­ly writ­ten amend­ments were ac­cept­ed in com­mit­tee stage.The Op­po­si­tion PNM re­sist­ed all as­pects of the bill, shout­ing "no!" at each point.

When the COP's Dou­glas said "yes" to the bill, PN­Mites ex­pressed sur­prise.PNM MPs Nile­ung Hy­po­lite and Colm Im­bert re­turned from va­ca­tion over­seas for the vote. Hy­po­lite came from the air­port at 10.30 pm on Mon­day. MP Joanne Thomas at­tend­ed with her neck in a brace.Af­ter de­bate around 4.30 am, COP's Seep­er­sad-Bachan told the T&T Guardian she was dis­ap­point­ed the bill had been passed.The Low­er House is now on a break un­til the House re­con­venes for the 2015 Bud­get on Sep­tem­ber 8.