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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Protest continues outside Senate over election bill

by

20140819

Protests over the gov­ern­ment's Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014 con­tin­ued yes­ter­day, a week be­fore the bill is sched­uled to be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate.Yes­ter­day, the bill was laid in the Sen­ate but oth­er is­sues were on the Or­der Pa­per for de­bate.A group of around 30 peo­ple stood on the pave­ment on Wright­son Road, white shirts match­ing the plac­ards in their hands, as they faced dri­vers and pedes­tri­ans with the mes­sage that they were not pre­pared to ac­cept the bill.

Jamelia Reid-Cato said she felt the en­tire bill was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and poor­ly draft­ed. She has gath­ered more than 3,000 sig­na­tures through an on­line pe­ti­tion call­ing for de­bate of the bill to be dis­con­tin­ued."I am here to­day to protest this bill. I feel like my vote is be­ing tak­en away."This bill sug­gests that I must vote for my par­ty, if it is a third par­ty, and then in 15 days my vote for that par­ty does not count," she said.

Her cho­sen po­lit­i­cal par­ty is not a third par­ty, as she is a mem­ber of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment. But she said her po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion had noth­ing to do with her feel­ings on the amend­ments to the Con­sti­tu­tion."I want to raise the aware­ness that this bill needs to be stopped. It is poor­ly draft­ed and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al."Reid-Cato, who is a lo­gis­tics man­ag­er at a pri­vate com­pa­ny, said she had read the bill and been left with more ques­tions than an­swers.

Vir­ginia Nevar­ra, from Mara­bel­la, said she de­cid­ed to come to Port-of-Spain ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing be­cause she was afraid of the im­pli­ca­tions of the bill."Why are they try­ing to take away my right to vote for whomev­er I want?" Nevar­ra asked.She said her main con­cern was over the runoff pro­vi­sion in the bill, which says if a can­di­date does not win by more than 50 per cent of votes in the ini­tial poll, a sec­ond elec­tion would be called with the top two par­ties vy­ing for the seat.

An­oth­er San Fer­nan­do res­i­dent said: "I have grand­chil­dren. If I don't stand up and be one of the peo­ple try­ing to stop this, then I would not be do­ing what is right for them."Most of the pro­test­ers claimed to be in­de­pen­dent of any po­lit­i­cal par­ty, but said they were peo­ple con­cerned with their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights and free­doms."This bill is op­pres­sive and it is a cha­rade and a mock­ery," said Trevor Con­taste, as he held two plac­ards in the air, fac­ing pass­ing cars and oc­ca­sion­al­ly turn­ing to­wards pedes­tri­an traf­fic.

Fix­in TnT Pres­i­dent Kirk Wait­he was al­so at the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day and said he would be de­liv­er­ing a pack­age to all sen­a­tors be­fore the de­bate on Tues­day."We will be giv­ing them the copy of the pe­ti­tion ini­ti­at­ed by Jamelia Reid-Cato and oth­er doc­u­ments to con­sid­er dur­ing this de­bate," he said.When the bill was de­bat­ed in the Low­er House last week dur­ing a marathon ses­sion, a group of pro­test­ers camped out­side the Par­lia­ment to high­light their ob­jec­tion to the con­tro­ver­sial runoff pro­vi­sion.


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