Dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion at the first sit­ting fifth and fi­nal ses­sion of the tenth Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar laid out her Gov­ern­ment's plan for the pro­posed sweep­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form changes to be brought in the Con­sti­tu­tion­al (Amend­ment) Bill. The bill is to be de­bat­ed next week.

Fol­low­ing is the PM's full state­ment:

I am pleased to make a state­ment on the first day of the epoch-mak­ing and rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes we have ush­ered in through the new Stand­ing Or­ders.We take pride in the fact that we have been able to over­haul and com­pre­hen­sive­ly re­vise our Stand­ing Or­ders, which op­er­at­ed for over half a cen­tu­ry, from 1961.

Like­wise I am pleased that we take ac­tion and we take pride in lat­er in­tro­duc­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion­al (Amend­ment) Bill 2014 which seeks to en­sure that we keep more of our promis­es made in our 2010 Man­i­festo (in fact we re­call this is the first ever man­i­festo to be adopt­ed through Par­lia­ment as our pol­i­cy agen­da for de­vel­op­ment and progress).In that man­i­festo, we sought to es­tab­lish a part­ner­ship with the peo­ple to build uni­ty and en­sure pros­per­i­ty for all.

Good gov­er­nance was sought through ef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion, par­tic­i­pa­tion, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.The adop­tion of the man­i­festo through Par­lia­ment as our de­vel­op­ment pol­i­cy agen­da was the best way to en­sure that cit­i­zens had the pow­er to hold us to our com­mit­ments, and to de­mand of us, the de­vel­op­ment and progress that we promised.In oth­er words, we im­me­di­ate­ly put the pow­er where it right­ful­ly be­longed–in the hands of the peo­ple.

As out­lined in our Achieve­ments Book­let, Ho­n­ourable Speak­er, we have de­liv­ered on over 90 per cent of our promis­es, con­tained in our 2010 man­i­festo. And, to­day we seek to de­liv­er even more of those promis­es–by keep­ing our con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form promise to give more pow­er to the peo­ple.

Com­mis­sion on­Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form

Mr Speak­er, if I may give a brief back­ground as to how we ar­rived here, on March 2, 2013 the Cab­i­net ap­point­ed a Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form (NC­CR) to "en­gage in the widest pos­si­ble con­sul­ta­tion as a pre-req­ui­site to con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form."

Mat­ters for con­sid­er­a­tion were to in­clude lim­i­ta­tions on terms of ser­vice by the Prime Min­is­ter, a right of re­call in re­spect of non-per­form­ing par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives, re­spect­ing the voic­es of the mi­nori­ties whilst giv­ing ef­fect to the will of the ma­jor­i­ty, mak­ing every vote count and al­so for pro­vi­sion for fixed dates for gen­er­al elec­tions.

These mat­ters, and of course oth­ers, were con­sid­ered by a very dis­tin­guished con­sti­tu­tion­al com­mis­sion chaired by the Hon Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Mr Prakash Ra­mad­har and in­clud­ed Madam Jus­tice Am­ri­ka Ti­wary-Red­dy, Mr Jus­tice Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour, Dr Mer­le Hodge, Dr Hamid Ghany and Mr Car­los Dil­lon.

This com­mis­sion op­er­at­ed so as to achieve pub­lic in­volve­ment. There was ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tion and a care­ful re­port with rec­om­men­da­tions was pro­duced. This is a copy, Mr Speak­er, of the re­port by the Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion and there­after, we went back to the pub­lic for fur­ther con­sul­ta­tions and an ad­den­dum or sup­ple­men­tary re­port was al­so pro­duced.Mr Speak­er, the bill which will be laid is sound­ly based on the rec­om­men­da­tions and amend­ments to our Con­sti­tu­tion, as set forth in the re­port and the post script re­port.

I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank these com­mis­sion­ers in­clud­ing the ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs and in­deed all the many cit­i­zens across the na­tion who made their voic­es heard and con­tributed to the di­a­logue.

Pro­posed re­form

A Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment Bill 2014, Mr Speak­er, is to be in­tro­duced to­day, which will pro­pose a term lim­it for the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, a re­call pro­vi­sion and a runoff poll in elec­tions for the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.These mea­sures, Mr Speak­er, re­quire on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty.Fur­ther, I will in the near fu­ture, lay a Bill to fix the dates of Par­lia­ments so the dates for gen­er­al elec­tions will be known.Such a bill will re­quire a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty.

Re­form De­tail­s­The re­form de­tails Mr Speak­er:

First­ly, term lim­its for the Prime Min­is­ter.

1) Term lim­its for the Prime Min­is­ter

In our present pro­pos­als there is a sim­ple amend­ment which pre­vents the Pres­i­dent from of­fer­ing the Prime Min­is­ter­ship to any­one who has served for two full terms or at least ten years and six month, which is the two con­sti­tu­tion­al terms.Once a Prime Min­is­ter has served for a pe­ri­od of ten years and six months (five years be­ing the nor­mal five-year life of a Par­lia­ment and the sub­se­quent 90-day pe­ri­od by which gen­er­al elec­tions must be held).

We are of the view Mr Speak­er, that fos­silised lead­er­ship, which en­trench­es it­self via ma­nip­u­la­tion and con­trol of par­ty pol­i­tics, is an anath­e­ma to the prin­ci­ples of democ­ra­cy and growth.We have had our fair share of lead­ers who con­tin­ued to rule and re­fused to give way even though it was ob­vi­ous that the time for change had come.This can suf­fo­cate new tal­ent and sti­fle a democ­ra­cy.

The US sys­temvs West­min­ster

The two-term-lim­it pro­vi­sion is a very im­por­tant fea­ture to give pow­er to the peo­ple and for a pow­er­ful democ­ra­cy. And so, Mr Speak­er, the pro­vi­sions will be con­tained in the bill so I will not spend time to read the ex­act word­ing of those pro­vi­sions.But I would want to say that, whilst Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents leave of­fice with dig­ni­ty and grace, West­min­ster Prime Min­is­ters cling to pow­er to the very end and are of­ten forced out of of­fice in in­dig­ni­ty and dis­grace. These were the words I read long ago in an ar­ti­cle by Prof Sel­wyn Ryan.

And so, whilst Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents leave, Mr Speak­er, there is em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence to sug­gest that this may well be true.Some 91 coun­tries world­wide, Mr Speak­er, have term lim­its of two terms for their heads of gov­ern­ment. We are seek­ing to be­come coun­try num­ber 92 with term lim­its for the Prime Min­is­ter.There are many ben­e­fits for this, Mr Speak­er, and in the de­bate, we will spend we will spend more time giv­en the re­straints of the new Stand­ing Or­ders.

We will just men­tion the sec­ond pro­vi­sion con­tained in the bill– the right of re­call, Mr Speak­er.

Right of re­call

This amend­ment would cre­ate the abil­i­ty to re­call in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of the House af­ter the ex­pi­ra­tion of three years from the date of elec­tion.The right of re­call is a term used to de­scribe a process where­by the elec­torate can pe­ti­tion to trig­ger a vote be­tween sched­uled elec­tions on the suit­abil­i­ty of an ex­ist­ing elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive to con­tin­ue in of­fice.This forms part of the sys­tems of gov­ern­ment at dif­fer­ent lev­els in sev­er­al coun­tries, in­clud­ing Cana­da, the Unit­ed States, Switzer­land, Philip­pines and Venezuela.

Again, the bill would lay out the pro­ce­dure for that re­call. And, there are sev­er­al ben­e­fits for the re­call.This again, Mr Speak­er is to give us a stronger democ­ra­cy, a stronger con­nec­tion be­tween elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the elec­torate. And, of course, Mr Speak­er, greater rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the par­lia­men­tary lev­el.Third­ly, we seek to ex­pand the ex­ist­ing right of re­call in the Con­sti­tu­tion. You will re­call Sec­tion 49 A, which is a right of re­call but it is on­ly with­in the hands of the leader of a par­ty. It was ex­er­cised in the case of St Joseph.

What we are seek­ing to do is to ex­pand that right of re­call to place the pow­er in the hands of the peo­ple and the peo­ple of the coun­try will be the ones to trig­ger re­call of an MP.The right of re­call, Mr Speak­er, does not yet ex­ist at West­min­ster and so this is a very bold step.It may well be that T&T may lead the way for West­min­ster be­cause we would be the first West­min­ster-style democ­ra­cy that will be adopt­ing the right of re­call.

In­deed, in the Queen's speech, June 4, 2014 she stat­ed that her gov­ern­ment will in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion on the re­call of MPs.So we shall be the first of the 52 Com­mon­wealth coun­tries.

Sec­ond bal­lotrunoff vot­ing

The third pro­vi­sion is for sec­ond bal­lot runoff vot­ing.Sec­tion 46 (1) of our Con­sti­tu­tion states that "the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives shall con­sist of mem­bers who shall be elect­ed in the man­ner pro­vid­ed by Par­lia­ment." This means that Par­lia­ment is vest­ed with the au­thor­i­ty to pro­vide for the man­ner by which mem­bers are to be elect­ed to this ho­n­ourable House.I wish to change the way we elect our mem­bers to strength­en our democ­ra­cy in a way that makes the pow­er of the peo­ple supreme.

Re­call and runoff polls are clear­ly linked.The runoff is of­ten viewed as a corol­lary of the right of re­call as an MP who is elect­ed with less than 50 per cent of the votes cast is ob­vi­ous­ly im­me­di­ate­ly vul­ner­a­ble to a re­call.Such polls, it can be not­ed, are wide­ly used in coun­tries with sub­stan­tial de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tions in­clud­ing France, Switzer­land, Ar­genti­na, Venezuela, the Philip­pines, Tai­wan and South Ko­rea.

A runoff poll is pro­posed so that each mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will on­ly be­come such a mem­ber if he ob­tains more than 50 per cent of the votes cast in a con­stituen­cy.This means that where, on a first poll at an elec­tion that is not achieved, a sec­ond poll will with­in 15 days be held be­tween the top two can­di­dates.

This will place greater em­pha­sis on the qual­i­ty of the can­di­dates se­lect­ed, as the ques­tion in the runoff will be: "Which of these two can­di­dates will bet­ter serve me and my con­stituen­cy?"In such a sys­tem, the voic­es of the mi­nor­i­ty would be re­spect­ed even as ef­fect is giv­en to the will of the ma­jor­i­ty and, every sin­gle vote would mat­ter and count as the pos­si­bil­i­ty of vot­ing a sec­ond time will breathe new life and mean­ing in­to the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.

No mi­nor­i­ty MP

This mea­sure reaf­firms democ­ra­cy and en­sures that the bal­ance of pow­er is al­ways tipped in favour of the peo­ple, not the Gov­ern­ment.Over the years, we have seen so many can­di­dates get elect­ed to this House on the ba­sis of win­ning less than 50 per cent of the votes cast.

It would be un­fair to fu­ture can­di­dates who will be elect­ed and who will now come un­der the re­vised con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions for be­ing re­called by their con­stituents that they should start their term of of­fice as MPs on the ba­sis of be­ing mi­nor­i­ty win­ners. That will on­ly serve to strength­en any per­sons who may wish to use the re­vised re­call process for ul­te­ri­or mo­tives.It is nec­es­sary to pro­tect against this by hav­ing all MPs elect­ed on a ma­jor­i­ty ba­sis.

Fur­ther, be­cause of its ef­fec­tive­ness in defin­ing democ­ra­cy and se­cur­ing the rights of peo­ple over the rights of politi­cians, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress will al­so be con­sid­er­ing the adop­tion of this process in­to its con­sti­tu­tion, sub­ject of course to the agree­ment of the mem­ber­ship.

Fixed date­for elec­tions

Mr Speak­er, hith­er­to, the Prime Min­is­ter has been sub­ject to no lim­it on her term of of­fice and no par­tic­u­lar con­straints have been put on her abil­i­ty to ad­vise the Pres­i­dent to dis­solve Par­lia­ment and set a date for gen­er­al elec­tions.The com­mis­sion has rec­om­mend­ed that the date for gen­er­al elec­tions be fixed. It is there­fore pro­posed that the life of a Par­lia­ment should or­di­nar­i­ly be fixed at five years.

This will ef­fec­tive­ly fix the date for the hold­ing of gen­er­al elec­tions. Long gone would be the days of sil­ly boasts and taunts about lead­ers "hav­ing the date in their back pock­et."This pro­vides clar­i­ty for the pop­u­la­tion at large and en­hances the abil­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic life, for all will know the elec­toral timetable. This will en­able all par­tic­i­pants in the po­lit­i­cal life of T&T to have the cer­tain­ty need­ed to take a full and fair part in a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy.

Fur­ther­more, the role, Mr Speak­er, of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate is en­hanced be­cause the in­flu­ence of the ex­ec­u­tive over Par­lia­ment is less­ened.I am sure, Mr Speak­er, that all mem­bers of this ho­n­ourable House and the Sen­ate wel­come any­thing which strength­ens Par­lia­ment.It is my in­ten­tion to lay a bill with this re­form short­ly.

Con­clu­sion

I thank you very much, Mr Speak­er, and I say that these moves, these ini­tia­tives are ini­tia­tives we promised in our man­i­festo in 2010, we placed in­to gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy on our agen­da for de­vel­op­ment.

We are keep­ing those promis­es to place pow­er, and greater pow­er, in the hands of the peo­ple.