Charles Kong Soo

Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) po­lit­i­cal leader and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har says he is com­fort­able with the runoff sys­tem be­ing pro­posed in the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014, due for de­bate in Par­lia­ment to­mor­row."The phi­los­o­phy is sol­id and well thought through, and the split-vote that many feared was un­found­ed," he said yes­ter­day, dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian.The runoff sys­tem trig­gered neg­a­tive feed­back from var­i­ous quar­ters, in­clud­ing the Op­po­si­tion.

In a let­ter to the me­dia, Dr Mer­le Hodge, a mem­ber of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mis­sion (CRC), said the runoff pro­pos­al was not in the PP's man­i­festo or in con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form con­sul­ta­tions around T&T or in the com­mis­sion's re­port. She dis­as­so­ci­at­ed her­self from the pro­pos­al.Mean­while, Ra­mad­har, who head­ed the CRC, said it was a good thing which would serve to strength­en democ­ra­cy and al­low for the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple to choose the win­ner in a con­stituen­cy or even in gov­ern­ment.

He said, "If a cer­tain par­ty does not win, the runoff gives the par­ty an op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­lay with ei­ther of the two par­ties to se­cure the 51 per cent ma­jor­i­ty which en­hances the op­tions for both vot­er and par­ty."It is an im­prove­ment on the sit­u­a­tion where the win­ner takes it all and you have no po­lit­i­cal space for those who do not win."What it does al­so al­low are in­ter­est groups to or­gan­ise them­selves in­to po­lit­i­cal par­ties, while un­der the present cir­cum­stances they have no hope of in­flu­enc­ing the pol­i­tics."

Ac­cord­ing to Ra­mad­har, the po­lit­i­cal par­ties en­gaged in runoffs will now have rea­son to in­volve small­er par­ties or in­ter­est groups in the process if they want­ed to firm up their chances of suc­cess in the runoffs. The in­ter­est groups, he said, could now par­tic­i­pate be­cause they would gath­er votes and if there was a runoff, those votes would be nec­es­sary to win, es­pe­cial­ly in mar­gin­al seats. Ra­mad­har said the con­sul­ta­tions were ex­ten­sive and the par­ty's man­i­festo promised that the voic­es of the peo­ple should be heard on the Con­sti­tu­tion.

He said as a re­sult of the con­sul­ta­tion, the com­mis­sion was asked to bring a re­port to the pop­u­la­tion. Be­cause of the par­ty's man­i­festo promise, the mem­bers took the po­si­tion that they would start the ball rolling for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form by putting the bill for­ward.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day an­nounced the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, to be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment to­mor­row, con­cern­ing two-term lim­its for prime min­is­ters, right of re­call for MPs, and the runoff poll sys­tem to ap­ply where can­di­dates re­ceived less than 50 per cent of votes cast.Ra­mad­har said it was on­ly the start and that there was more to come in the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form process.

He said he hoped that over time pub­lic pres­sure could be brought on the PNM to sup­port these very fun­da­men­tal con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments such as pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion which the en­tire coun­try viewed with great in­ter­est in the past.

Ra­mad­har de­nied that the runoff sys­tem was im­ple­ment­ed to serve the in­ter­ests of the PP and keep them in pow­er longer. He dis­missed this, say­ing "the very iden­ti­cal ar­gu­ments which the par­ty raised for pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion (the first time the par­ty had elec­toral re­form in lo­cal gov­ern­ment) were now be­ing raised by the same peo­ple."

When asked why pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion was al­lowed in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions and not in this new leg­is­la­tion, he replied that the par­ty did not have the ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment, that it re­quired three quar­ters of the vote and the Op­po­si­tion had al­ready in­di­cat­ed they were not go­ing to sup­port it.On claims by at­tor­ney Dou­glas Mendes that there are costs and dan­gers in the runoff sys­tem, Ra­mad­har said the is­sue at hand was what cost do you put on democ­ra­cy.

He said all elec­tions had a cost but there was a greater cost to the so­ci­ety when the mi­nor­i­ty won, the ma­jor­i­ty lost and were left in pain, thus di­vid­ing the coun­try.Con­cern­ing the COP Cab­i­net mem­bers' con­cern over the runoff sys­tem, Ra­mad­har said the is­sue was what was best for the na­tion and a lot of is­sues that need­ed air­ing would con­se­quent­ly be brought in­to the open.

Ra­mad­har said it was a mat­ter for the Prime Min­is­ter to de­cide if the bill should be held back for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion be­fore it reached the fi­nal stages of Par­lia­ment.The COP high rank­ing mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to meet to­day at Flag­ship House to dis­cuss whether they will be sup­port­ing the changes to the Con­sti­tu­tion.