Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) chair­man Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan says the Sen­ate de­bate on the con­tentious Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill should be de­ferred and fur­ther pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions should be held.Her state­ment comes days be­fore the bill is due to be laid in the Up­per House on Tues­day and de­bate sched­uled for Au­gust 26 sit­ting of the Sen­ate.Seep­er­sad-Bachan, in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian on Wednes­day night, main­tained her reser­va­tions about the bill, which seeks to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion to al­low for the re­call of MPs, a two-term lim­it for prime min­is­ters, fixed elec­tion dates and, the con­tro­ver­sial runoff poll for MPs who did not win their seats by ma­jor­i­ty of over 50 per cent of votes cast.

On Tues­day, when the bill was de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Seep­er­sad-Bachan and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an vot­ed against it, while fel­low COP mem­ber Rodger Samuel ab­stained.COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har and mem­ber Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas vot­ed with gov­ern­ment MPs for the bill even though the par­ty's Na­tion­al Coun­cil had de­cid­ed on Sun­day to de­fer vot­ing on the bill for at least one month.The bill was passed af­ter 23 MPs vot­ed for it, 14 against and Samuel ab­stained.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian af­ter of­fi­cial­ly turn­ing on the lights at the Gulf View Recre­ation Ground, Gulf View, La Ro­main, said pub­lic de­bate on the bill should be restart­ed.While she ac­knowl­edged that on­ly Per­sad-Bisses­sar could make the de­ci­sion to de­fer the Sen­ate de­bate, the San Fer­nan­do West MP is firm­ly of the be­lief that the bill is too im­por­tant not to al­low cit­i­zens to voice their opin­ion."This mat­ter needs wider con­sul­ta­tion and we need to go back to the pub­lic."I think the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form Com­mis­sion should be al­lowed to go back to the pub­lic for a sec­ond phase of dis­cus­sions to al­low for con­sul­ta­tion on all the mech­a­nisms that have been pro­posed," she said.While she agreed there should be a right of re­call, she has dif­fi­cul­ty with the runoff mech­a­nism be­ing pro­posed.

She al­so does not think the mech­a­nism be­ing pro­posed for re­call is the most ef­fec­tive."And there­fore, should we go back and ex­plain to the peo­ple how it will work, (find out) what are their views?"It is the bedrock prin­ci­ple of the COP that if you are go­ing to re­form the Con­sti­tu­tion of T&T, then it must emerge from the peo­ple, not from the politi­cians, and not from the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans," she added.Seep­er­sad-Bachan said a runoff was not the on­ly op­tion and there were oth­ers that should be ex­plored."When we make amend­ments to the Con­sti­tu­tion, it is not about pre­serv­ing any po­lit­i­cal par­ty, whether it is COP, UNC, PNM."This is not why you amend the Con­sti­tu­tion. When you amend the Con­sti­tu­tion it is for the fu­ture of T&T, the elec­torate," she con­tend­ed.

She said the two-can­di­date runoff sys­tem would elim­i­nate third par­ties and they would be­come no longer rel­e­vant.Seep­er­sad-Bachan said any amend­ments to the Con­sti­tu­tion "must al­ways rep­re­sent the judg­ment and the will of the peo­ple."In this par­tic­u­lar case we are not see­ing that be­cause it could not have pos­si­bly brought a bill on one Mon­day, lay it on the Par­lia­ment on Mon­day and ex­pect to de­bate that bill sev­en days af­ter," she added.She said the runoff pro­vi­sion was new to cit­i­zens and it was clear "the peo­ple do not un­der­stand it... they do not like it."

Bill again­st­COP prin­ci­ples

Seep­er­sad-Bachan, who said she stood by her vote on Tues­day, said the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill "goes against every­thing we rep­re­sent at the COP."She said she could not vote for a bill that would en­trench the two par­ty-sys­tem and mar­gin­alise the third con­stituen­cy.The COP's phi­los­o­phy, she said, had al­ways been to pro­mote a voice for the third con­stituen­cy and "this pro­vi­sion is go­ing to im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on that and we can­not stand by and say yes."We are sup­port­ing a pro­vi­sion, we are vot­ing for a pro­vi­sion in a bill that will ac­tu­al­ly go against what the par­ty has stood for," she added.

She said she dis­agreed with the rea­son­ing that Ra­mad­har, as the chair­man of the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form Com­mis­sion, had to sup­port the bill.How­ev­er, she said in a coali­tion gov­ern­ment it must be ex­pect­ed that part­ners would have dif­fer­ing views.She said the COP's na­tion­al coun­cil was up in arms over the leg­is­la­tion and passed a res­o­lu­tion to have Tues­day's de­bate post­poned and if that failed then MPs should vote us­ing their con­science.She said no in­ter­nal ac­tion would be tak­en against Ra­mad­har for his vote on Tues­day. He did not hold the view, she said, that the runoff sys­tem would neg­a­tive­ly af­fect the mul­ti-par­ty sys­tem.