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Friday, July 18, 2025

De­bat­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form in T&T

Henry, Ghany lead public debate on constitutional change

by

20140818

The pro­posed runoff sys­tem is "more de­mo­c­ra­t­ic" and will do no harm to vot­ers who sup­port­ed a can­di­date that failed to win the first round of elec­tions. If any­thing, the pro­posed sys­tem gives those vot­ers more op­tions than they now have.

This was the po­si­tion put for­ward by Nigel Hen­ry, chief an­a­lyst of So­lu­tion By Sim­u­la­tion, as he added his voice to pub­lic de­ba­teover the­Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014, at a fo­rum host­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies Unit (CAP­SU) of theDe­part­ment of Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine.

Vot­ers who sup­port nei­ther the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) nor the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) but who sup­port a third par­ty, such as the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) or the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP), will have the op­tion in the pro­posed sys­tem to vote for the "less­er of two evils" or to choose not to vote again, Hen­ry said. In the cur­rent First-Past-the-Post sys­tem, third par­ty sup­port­ers' on­ly op­tion is to ac­cept the re­sult at the end of the first round.

Ac­cord­ing to Hen­ry, un­der the pro­posed sys­tem, more peo­ple have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be hap­py with the re­sult than un­der the cur­rent sys­tem.

"Re­sult A can be called more de­mo­c­ra­t­ic than Re­sult B if more peo­ple are hap­py un­der Re­sult A com­pared to Re­sult B," he said. "I ar­gue that giv­en that sta­tis­ti­cal de­f­i­n­i­tion of democ­ra­cy, the two-round sys­tem is a more de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem."

Speak­ing to the Guardian in a post-event in­ter­view, Hen­ry said that if the leg­is­la­tion is en­act­ed, it is like­ly to have a tan­gi­ble im­pact on vot­er be­hav­iour, as more peo­ple are like­ly to vote in favour of a third par­ty, once they un­der­stand that a vote against one of the two ma­jor par­ties could now have a more mean­ing­ful im­pact on the even­tu­al out­come of the elec­tion.

"You can trans­late third par­ty votes in­to third par­ty seats," he said.

Hen­ry was among a five-mem­ber pan­el trad­ing­per­spec­tives on the mer­its of in­tro­ducin­ga sec­ond round ofrunoff votes in­tothe Par­lia­men­tary elec­toral sys­tem.

An­oth­er pan­el­list, Sam­raj Har­ri­paul, S.C., chair of the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion, agreed with Hen­ry that in­tro­duc­ing a sec­ond round of vot­ing would have a sub­stan­tial im­pact on vot­ers' be­hav­iour. Har­ri­paul said that, from his re­search, vot­er turnout was equal to or high­er than first-round vot­ing in "95 per cent" of the runoff elec­tions around the world.

Speak­ing be­fore Hen­ry, Dr­elec­tions re­sults da­ta from pre­vi­ous Par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, and iden­ti­fied all the con­stituen­cies in which there would have been runoff elec­tions, and the can­di­dates/par­ties who would have been in­volved.

"In 2007, 1991 and 1981, there would have been runoffs in the dou­ble dig­its."

he spe­cif­ic con­stituen­cies and can­di­dates who would have been in­volved in runoff elec­tions. The da­ta showed that third par­ty can­di­dates would not have been in­volved in the ma­jor­i­ty of the runoffs.

Dr. Bish­nu Ra­goonath, Head, De­part­ment of Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence, added a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive, out­lin­ing the his­to­ry of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form in T&T.

Dr. Olabisi Kuboni, chair of the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form Fo­rum (CRF), like at least two mem­bers of the au­di­ence who vol­un­teered their own per­spec­tives in the open ses­sion, took is­sue with the lack of con­sul­ta­tion in the process by which Bill had been de­vised.

"The CRF is say­ing that the de­bate in the Bill must be stopped. It must not be­come law," said Kuboni.

"The runoff sys­tem is bet­ter for ma­jor­i­ty rule but the ques­tion we have to ask is ma­jor­i­ty rule for whom."

Kuboni said the runoff sys­tem will on­ly per­pet­u­ate en­trenched racial di­vides in T&T so­ci­ety.

Mod­er­at­ed by­po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst­Mookesh Bas­deo, the fo­rum, which was held at the Man­age­ment Lec­ture The­atre of the UWI Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences,at­tract­ed about 60 par­tic­i­pants.


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