Gail Alexan­der

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) went in­to emer­gency re­sponse mode yes­ter­day, call­ing all MPs, le­gal ad­vis­ers and of­fi­cers to a se­ries of meet­ings to­day to for­mu­late its po­si­tion on the Gov­ern­ment's con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form leg­is­la­tion, which will be de­bat­ed in six days.

PNM PRO Faris Al-Rawi con­firmed the Op­po­si­tion would hold a se­ries of meet­ings from 10 am un­til tonight to pre­pare for Mon­day's de­bate of the bills – one of which in­volves the run-off bal­lot sys­tem which the PNM it­self had in­tro­duced for its own in­ter­nal poll in May."The de­bate is in six days, so it's all hands on deck to ex­am­ine the is­sues and pre­pare. We are not pan­ick­ing. It's all part of good or­gan­i­sa­tion," Al-Rawi added.

At is­sue par­tic­u­lar­ly is Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­al for a run-off poll in elec­tions, so that each mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will on­ly be­come an MP if he or she ob­tains more than 50 per cent of the votes cast in a con­stituen­cy.The Prime Min­is­ter, who an­nounced the mea­sure on Mon­day, al­so an­nounced pro­pos­als for a two-term lim­it for prime min­is­ters and right of re­call for non-per­form­ing MPs. These re­quire a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage, she said. De­bate be­gins on Mon­day morn­ing in Par­lia­ment.

While Gov­ern­ment's full com­ple­ment of MPs was present at Mon­day's open­ing of the par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, half the 13 Op­po­si­tion MPs were ab­sent.The PNM, which had ex­pect­ed a re­cess, lat­er ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of breach­ing Par­lia­ment's new Stand­ing Or­ders in con­ven­ing sit­tings next week dur­ing the ex­pect­ed "va­ca­tion" pe­ri­od.Yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley called to­day's meet­ing with MPs to get the par­ty's po­si­tion go­ing.

The par­ty hi­er­ar­chy is al­so meet­ing with le­gal ad­vis­ers and the cen­tral ex­ec­u­tive will cau­cus at 5 pm. This will be fol­lowed by a meet­ing of the gen­er­al coun­cil lat­er in the evening.The PNM's cen­tral ex­ec­u­tive runs the par­ty and makes de­ci­sions, some of which have to be rat­i­fied by the coun­cil, which is the PNM's high­est de­ci­sion-mak­ing body out­side of a par­ty con­ven­tion and in­volves rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all con­stituen­cies.

Al-Rawi said the PNM would sup­port mea­sures which the par­ty felt were worth­while if there was a case for sup­port "but what must hap­pen is con­sul­ta­tion and six days is not enough time to con­sid­er re­flec­tions and ques­tions."The par­ty must have con­sul­ta­tion but there seems to be an un­due haste by the Gov­ern­ment to push this leg­is­la­tion down the throats of the pub­lic," he added.

Al-Rawi said ab­sent PNM MPs on Mon­day in­clud­ed Joanne Thomas, who was ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tal that day; Don­na Cox, who was un­well; Amery Browne, who was un­able to make it; Pa­tri­cia McIn­tosh, over­seas; and Colm Im­bert, on a Eu­ro­pean va­ca­tion.He said Row­ley was sched­uled to trav­el to a New York meet­ing on Au­gust 11 and PNM whip Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald was due to trav­el this week. Al-Rawi said he was al­so sched­uled to go abroad this week.

"Many of our mem­bers were sched­uled to trav­el in the re­cess pe­ri­od so that's why we are hav­ing an emer­gency meet­ing to con­firm who will be re­quired to be here for the de­bate, the lo­gis­tics of get­ting them back in T&T and oth­er arrange­ments."Im­bert, for in­stance, is in Eu­rope and will be un­able to re­turn un­til the night time of (Mon­day's) de­bate, so we have a few days to get them back home," he added.

PNM San Fer­nan­do East MP Patrick Man­ning, one of the PNM MPs who at­tend­ed Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, will not speak in the up­com­ing de­bate. Nor is he at­tend­ing to­day's meet­ing, since he has ther­a­py, a spokesman said.

Par­ty wants more voic­es

Al-Rawi said the ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­try's se­nior coun­sel were all pro­ceed­ing on va­ca­tion as the courts closed on Ju­ly 31."Among them are the voic­es in the pub­lic do­main who would be se­ri­ous le­gal ex­perts on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form is­sues and they may be go­ing on va­ca­tion."There­fore, these bills would not re­ceive ful­some at­ten­tion con­cern­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al ram­i­fi­ca­tions in the short pe­ri­od we have left in which to de­lib­er­ate. It's cer­tain­ly un­like­ly," he added.

Al-Rawi said at­tor­neys as­sist­ing the PNM, in­clud­ing Stu­art Young and Michael Quam­i­na, are al­so due to trav­el. But, he said, the par­ty would al­so be in­volv­ing the ex­per­tise of for­mer AGs Brid­gette An­nisette-George and Glen­da More­an, at­tor­ney Baren­dra Sinanan, Dr Lenny Saith, Mar­tin Joseph and oth­ers.

He com­ment­ed: "This po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vre by the Gov­ern­ment in Au­gust is, to me, rem­i­nis­cent of their im­ple­men­ta­tion of the ear­ly procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34, which was al­so done in the month of Au­gust, be­fore In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions, when no one was pay­ing at­ten­tion."Say­ing the leg­is­la­tion was an "am­bush" by Gov­ern­ment, Al-Rawi added: "But we'll be pre­pared, with all of to­day's meet­ings in the par­ty, to pros­e­cute the peo­ple's busi­ness de­spite the am­bush."

The PNM al­so had its own con­sti­tu­tion re­view com­mit­tee, he said. Al Rawi added that the PNM's run-off sys­tem was not the same as what Gov­ern­ment was propos­ing.PNM chair­man Franklin Khan said the PNM used the run-off sys­tem in its May poll but on­ly to elect a leader and the sys­tem was de­signed for elect­ing lead­ers such as in Latin Amer­i­ca.

Al-Rawi said there were ques­tions on Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­als and the PNM didn't trust the Prime Min­is­ter's ex­pla­na­tion on the back­ground.He added: "You're not com­par­ing ap­ples with ap­ples (be­cause) we had a closed sys­tem. The run-off is used in oth­er democ­ra­cies. The ques­tion is if it can be ap­plied to T&T's elec­toral sys­tem.

"There are ram­i­fi­ca­tions to be con­sid­ered, in­clud­ing the fact that this is de­signed to kill third par­ties – like the COP and ILP – and it would en­trench the two-par­ty sys­tem. So this isn't the same as our run-off plan."Al­so, con­sul­ta­tions by the Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion, head­ed by Prakash Ra­mad­har, didn't in­volve any con­sul­ta­tion on this as­pect, so Gov­ern­ment must ex­plain the un­holy rush to deal with this.

"We feel the rush to de­bate this on Mon­day and bring it back in the Sen­ate the fol­low­ing week is to en­sure that the peo­ple who have con­sti­tu­tion­al un­der­stand­ing don't get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak out against it but we in the PNM must get the widest pos­si­ble par­ty views."

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment was pre­pared for Mon­day's de­bate.