Kali­fa Clyne

Hours be­fore Sen­a­tors were set to de­bate the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014 in the up­per House to­day, a small group of Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) mem­bers placed an "X" over the par­ty's lo­gos on their t-shirts and raised plac­ards to protest the runoff pro­vi­sion of the bill.The protest took place dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the bill at the Hi­malaya Club in Barataria, when four mem­bers of the COP left their seats to re­trieve plac­ards that were in op­po­si­tion to the runoff po­si­tion.

The plac­ards bore state­ments like "Axe the Praks," "Sen­a­tors must say no to runoff," "Run-off a dag­ger in the heart of the COP," "Prakash the Be­tray­er" and "Sen­a­tors 'do so' to the Run Off."The protest group was led by Rudolph Hanamji.The protest, which was most­ly silent, be­gan dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion by Bar­ba­di­an po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Pe­ter Wick­ham, af­ter he de­scribed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as the on­ly Caribbean leader sit­ting who was will­ing to give up pow­er.

He said, how­ev­er, that is was un­for­tu­nate that T&T was hav­ing the dis­cus­sion of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form in the con­text of one par­ty ver­sus an­oth­er."T&T has sac­ri­ficed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have an adult con­ver­sa­tion on con­sti­tu­tion­al change," Wick­ham said.Wick­ham's com­ments fol­lowed a tone of pos­i­tive views on the bill, which was on­ly di­rect­ly op­posed by vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Suni­ty Ma­haraj.

Ma­haraj, who made it clear she did not sup­port the pop­u­lar view of the pan­el, said she could not sup­port any leg­is­la­tion which did not stem from prop­er process.Not­ing that the runoff pro­vi­sion was added to the bill with­out con­sul­ta­tion, Ma­haraj said she was in com­plete op­po­si­tion of the bill. She added that as the COP's gen­er­al coun­cil had tak­en a po­si­tion to have the de­bate of the bill de­layed the day be­fore it was de­bate in the low­er House, the par­ty's leader Prakash Ra­mad­har had gone rogue.

"How can you talk about the COP hav­ing pow­er when this bill was not even dis­cussed with the COP be­fore it was vot­ed up­on? Ma­haraj asked."When the COP can give an in­struc­tion to its leader and for all I see, the COP's leader has gone rogue."Ma­haraj said the con­science vote al­lowed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar could not ex­plain Ra­mad­har's vote."The con­science vote did not re­lease the leader of the COP from the in­struc­tions his par­ty gave him," she said.

She said while Gov­ern­ment was send­ing a mes­sage of giv­ing pow­er to the peo­ple, this could not be done with a flawed process."You can­not plant au­toc­ra­cy and preach democ­ra­cy."In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, said the bill al­lowed for even the prime min­is­ter to be re­called and said it would lead to peo­ple-cen­tred gov­ern­ment.

She said while there had been calls for pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, this was not al­ways the best for­mu­la and gave the ex­am­ple of a hung Par­lia­ment in Guyana as a re­sult of that sys­tem.Ram­per­sad al­so ex­pressed fear that if con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form did not hap­pen now, it would nev­er hap­pen.This was neg­a­tive­ly re­ceived by mem­bers of the crowd who vo­cif­er­ous­ly asked for ev­i­dence to sup­port this.

The runoff pro­vi­sion fa­cil­i­tates a sec­ond elec­tion if no can­di­date is able to gar­ner more than 50 per cent of votes in an ini­tial elec­tion.On­ly the two par­ties with the most votes will be el­i­gi­ble to run in sec­ond elec­tion to be held with­in 15 days of the gen­er­al elec­tion.But sev­er­al sec­tors of the pub­lic have spo­ken out against this mea­sure, say­ing it was not dis­cussed dur­ing the pub­lic fo­rums on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.