Yvonne?Ba­boolal

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will em­bark on con­sti­tu­tion re­form, cre­ate a rev­enue au­thor­i­ty for greater ef­fi­cien­cy in tax col­lec­tion and re­haul the so­cial wel­fare sys­tem to cut down on state de­pen­den­cy im­me­di­ate­ly up­on as­sum­ing of­fice in 2015.To­ba­go will al­so be grant­ed in­ter­nal self gov­er­nance, there will be an abo­li­tion of ap­peals to the Privy Coun­cil, the in­sti­tu­tion of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) as the fi­nal court of ap­peal and in­vest­ment in the de­vel­op­ment of the city of Port-of-Spain.

These are some of the plans con­tained in the PNM's Vi­sion 2030 pol­i­cy doc­u­ment and in a Na­tion­al Elec­tion Con­tract dis­closed by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley at the par­ty's 45th an­nu­al con­ven­tion at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.Row­ley an­nounced the plans in the par­ty's pol­i­cy doc­u­ment, "The Road Ahead to 2030, Build­ing a Na­tion, To­geth­er."He said while the PNM's po­si­tion re­mains that the 1976 Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion has served T&T well, re­form may be re­quired."We will em­bark on that process im­me­di­ate­ly on get­ting in­to of­fice so that there is enough time for con­sul­ta­tion, analy­sis and de­bate to take place be­fore the re­forms go to Par­lia­ment."

Ar­eas of Con­sti­tu­tion re­form will in­clude:

�2 In­ter­nal Self Gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go and the na­ture of the uni­tary state of T&T.

�2 Abo­li­tion of ap­peals to the Privy Coun­cil and in­sti­tut­ing the CCJ as our fi­nal ap­pel­late court

�2 The role and func­tions of the ser­vice com­mis­sions

�2 Ap­point­ment of a com­mis­sion­er of po­lice

�2 The role and func­tions of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion

�2 The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the ex­er­cise of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al au­thor­i­ty in re­la­tion to white col­lar crime

�2 Elec­toral sys­tem re­form

�2 Clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the role and pow­ers of the Pres­i­dent.

Row­ley said among the chal­lenges the PNM will face is the is­sue of state de­pen­den­cy by "mil­lion­aire and scrunter" alike.He said a raft of wel­fare sup­port and oth­er pro­grammes re­sult­ing from oil rev­enues had en­gen­dered the "deep un­der­bel­ly of chron­ic de­pen­den­cy" seen to­day in par­tic­u­lar sec­tions of the so­ci­ety. "Too many peo­ple, from mil­lion­aire to scrunter, have be­come en­tire­ly de­pen­dent on the state," he said."In fact we now have some CEPEP con­tracts which have been cap­tured by busi­ness­men who ob­tain the con­tracts and make con­sid­er­able prof­it from them while pro­vid­ing lit­tle or no train­ing or im­prove­ments for work­ers nor any mi­grat­ing of their com­pa­nies from the pro­gramme."If, and I dare­say when oil prices and en­er­gy sec­tor rev­enues col­lapse, we will not be able to main­tain these ex­pen­di­tures and the so­cial con­se­quences might be dire."

A Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment will cre­ate a tax au­thor­i­ty to max­imise rev­enue col­lec­tion, he said.And while the PNM sup­ports the de­vel­op­ment of dif­fer­ent re­gions in T&T, the cap­i­tal city must be treat­ed like a cap­i­tal city. "While we will sup­port and en­cour­age planned re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment in Trinidad and in To­ba­go, as well as the sen­si­ble de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of gov­ern­ment ser­vices, we will con­tin­ue to in­vest in the de­vel­op­ment of the cap­i­tal city of Port-of-Spain," he said, not­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment is, at present, spend­ing bil­lions to up­grade Ch­agua­nas to city sta­tus.Row­ley said crime was a chal­lenge the PNM will al­so have to face, es­pe­cial­ly mur­ders."The re­sponse here is to train and sus­tain, at all lev­els from par­ent to com­mis­sion­er," he said.