Melis­sa Doughty

The T&T De­bates Com­mis­sion (TTDC) will con­sid­er amend­ing the rules and chang­ing the al­lot­ted time for the ques­tion and re­but­tal ses­sion af­ter its re­view of the se­nior rep­re­sen­ta­tives' de­bate.CEO of the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Cather­ine Ku­mar, speak­ing on be­half of the com­mis­sion, said aris­ing from a post-mortem on Thurs­day's de­bate, the com­mis­sion will ex­am­ine whether the 90-sec­ond and 30-sec­ond pe­ri­ods giv­en to de­baters are ad­e­quate.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Ku­mar said there had been four par­ties in­volved as op­posed to the three orig­i­nal­ly slat­ed and the com­mis­sion did not want to make the pro­gramme too long and there­by lose the in­ter­est of the au­di­ence.The se­nior rep­re­sen­ta­tives' de­bate was held on Thurs­day night and the lead­ers' de­bate will be held on Tues­day in the build-up to the Oc­to­ber 21 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.The de­bate was held at Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG) stu­dios, Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain.

The MSJ's Akins Vi­dale de­bat­ed against Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Colm Im­bert, In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) Ken Roach and Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan on be­half of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship.Vi­dale, Im­bert, Ram­bachan and Roach spoke on is­sues re­lat­ed to lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tion, among them the in­tro­duc­tion of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the elec­tion of al­der­men, de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion and de­vo­lu­tion of pow­er, the par­ty's ap­proach to lo­cal gov­ern­ment and its re­form and the rel­e­vance of lo­cal gov­ern­ment.

The com­mis­sion, Ku­mar said, was pleased with the de­bate, say­ing feed­back re­ceived on the com­mis­sion's so­cial me­dia ac­counts such as Face­book in­di­cat­ed that a lot of peo­ple watched the event and were hap­py with it. Many felt that MSJ's rep­re­sen­ta­tive Akins Vi­dale had emerged on top.The lead­ers' de­bate will see Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, on be­half of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, de­bate against MSJ leader David Ab­du­lah, PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and ILP leader Jack Warn­er.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said yes­ter­day the re­but­tal time al­lot­ted was too short and an amend­ment to the time would be good."The gen­er­al pub­lic was quite pleased with the young MSJ can­di­date, Akins Vi­dale. He was quite im­pres­sive. He holds a lot of promise po­lit­i­cal­ly. The pub­lic warmed to him," she said.How­ev­er, on whether Vi­dale's per­for­mance at the de­bate will al­ter the MSJ's chances in the Oc­to­ber 21 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, Ram­per­sad was less op­ti­mistic.

She said while peo­ple might want to see more of Vi­dale, the MSJ was not a high-pro­file po­lit­i­cal par­ty and the pub­lic heard a lot about the par­ty's leader (Ab­du­lah) did not know much about oth­er MSJ mem­bers.So Ram­per­sad said she did not see Vi­dale's per­for­mance adding to the MSJ's stock of votes al­though she said a few swing vot­ers might have changed their minds af­ter the de­bate.

ILP's rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ken Roach, she said, was the biggest dis­ap­point­ment since all eyes were on him, and it was sur­pris­ing that the par­ty did not choose some­one who could have met the stan­dard.Asked if it would as­sist the par­ty in the long term, Ram­per­sad said that was left to be seen since it took a lot more than a de­bate to build a par­ty.When asked which de­bater was han­dling the ques­tions best, 22 of the 35 com­ments on the T&T De­bates Com­mis­sion Face­book page felt Vi­dale had han­dled it the best.

One com­men­ta­tor on the page said, "Mr Akins Vi­dale, he has shown he has done his re­search."Vi­dale, who spoke with the me­dia af­ter the event, said gen­er­al­ly the de­bate went well, though there were a few ques­tions he felt could have been bet­ter han­dled. He com­mend­ed the com­mis­sion's de­ci­sion to al­low the MSJ, not orig­i­nal­ly in­clud­ed, to par­take in it.

Asked how the de­bate as­sist­ed in ce­ment­ing the par­ty as a cred­i­ble po­lit­i­cal choice on the po­lit­i­cal land­scape de­spite crit­i­cisms that it was not ready for gov­er­nance, Vi­dale said, "I think it was im­por­tant be­cause we would not have oth­er­wise got­ten as large an au­di­ence as we did this evening and it was im­por­tant not just for us to be here, but for me to ar­tic­u­late those po­si­tions."ILP chair­man Robin Mon­tano, in an in­ter­view af­ter the de­bate, said he felt the par­ty was al­most "am­bushed."

Roach, who took a long time to ar­tic­u­late his re­but­tals and an­swer his ques­tions, con­stant­ly ran out of time dur­ing the two-hour de­bate.But Mon­tano said Roach was an ex­treme­ly knowl­edge­able per­son, es­pe­cial­ly on mat­ters of lo­cal gov­ern­ment. Roach, Mon­tano said, had a prob­lem in that he was not ac­cus­tomed to this for­mat and ad­mit­ted: "He had a clear dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting his points across in the lim­it­ed time avail­able to him."

Asked why he or Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit had not de­bat­ed, since they were of equal stature with Im­bert or Ram­bachan, Mon­tano said, "If we had been told...we asked who was com­ing on the oth­er side and we were not told, ever."Say­ing the par­ty would have sent a deputy po­lit­i­cal leader to de­bate with a deputy po­lit­i­cal leader, he said, "If I were a para­noid per­son I would say it was al­most like we were am­bushed."Im­bert dis­missed these claims.

He said, how­ev­er, there could have been few­er ques­tions and more time to re­spond. Im­bert found the ques­tions to be very well framed and re­vealed the char­ac­ter of the vac­u­ous po­lit­i­cal plans the par­ties have and that the de­bate served its in­tend­ed pur­pose."It was a true de­bate," he said. Ku­mar, asked about Mon­tano's com­plaints, said Im­bert had re­spond­ed to them and that the com­mis­sion had ad­ver­tised the names be­fore the de­bate.

Im­bert said, "I over­heard Mr Mon­tano say that the ILP was am­bushed here tonight, that they were not told who the de­baters were go­ing to be."That is en­tire­ly un­true, I want to cor­rect the record. It was un­fair to the De­bates Com­mis­sion for the ILP [to say that] just be­cause they feel em­bar­rassed. Maybe they felt their rep­re­sen­ta­tive did not per­form well."It is un­true. It is wrong of them to say that."

Ram­bachan said it was very im­por­tant for de­bates such as these be held and give an op­por­tu­ni­ty to let vot­ers know about the par­ties' re­spec­tive plans and pro­grammes.