At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said it was a mat­ter of pub­lic record that Hodge was a sup­port­er of for­mer COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an, part of COP and had ap­peared on the plat­form in sup­port of Dook­er­an dur­ing an in­ter­nal par­ty elec­tion years ago.Ram­lo­gan al­so said he didn't know if there was any mer­it to the claim that her stance was "a hang­over from the in­ter­nal elec­tion cam­paign that did not go too well for the Dook­er­an fac­tion as op­posed to the Ra­mad­har fac­tion."

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Dook­er­an said Ram­lo­gan's re­mark was "...a triv­i­al­i­ty."Dook­er­an de­clined com­ment on Hodge's state­ments. He was al­so mum on whether he sup­port­ed the runoff poll pro­pos­al and if he would speak in Mon­day's de­bate of the bills.Seep­er­sad-Bachan, how­ev­er, de­fend­ed Hodge against the AG's state­ment."He should re­frain from at­tack­ing the pro­fes­sion­al in­tegri­ty of oth­ers," she said.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan con­tin­ued, "I find him out of place and out of line in even re­fer­ring to the in­ter­nal COP elec­tions. This is about T&T's fu­ture and not any in­ter­nal elec­tion. I find the AG way out of line."In fact the COP Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive has been unan­i­mous in the view that mem­bers need­ed to dis­cuss the is­sue. We need to as­cer­tain mem­bers' views, we be­lieve in con­sul­ta­tion."

She said the runoff poll pro­pos­al will be dis­cussed by COP's Na­tion­al Coun­cil to­mor­row and she had no com­ment on her po­si­tion cur­rent­ly. Nor did she say if she would speak in Mon­day's de­bate.

The Guardian con­firmed that on Thurs­day cab­i­net mem­bers held a spe­cial meet­ing on the leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing the runoff poll is­sue and that con­cerns were raised by sev­er­al mem­bers, in­clud­ing some who felt that the leg­is­la­tion should not be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day. It is un­der­stood sev­er­al felt the pub­lic need­ed to prop­er­ly un­der­stand what the runoff poll en­tailed, its con­se­quences for par­ties and pros and cons.

It was al­so con­firmed that con­cerns had been raised with­in the Cab­i­net since the runoff mat­ter was first pre­sent­ed sev­er­al weeks ago.Sources said the is­sue was first brought up late last month. It then arose be­fore the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es sub-com­mit­tee of Cab­i­net around Ju­ly 28. The runoff pro­pos­al and oth­er as­pects went to Cab­i­net on Ju­ly 31 when mem­bers of Cab­i­net who had been out of T&T were back in the coun­try, they added.

At that meet­ing at the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal, con­cerns on the runoff poll were raised by sev­er­al peo­ple, they added. How­ev­er, the leg­is­la­tion was still an­nounced in Par­lia­ment five days lat­er.