Gail Alexan­der

The Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­al for run-off polls has the po­ten­tial to cre­ate dan­ger­ous po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty, says Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.Yes­ter­day, he urged the pop­u­la­tion to voice its re­jec­tion of the idea, say­ing the pro­pos­al could as­sist a de­feat­ed gov­ern­ment or MPs to re­main in of­fice un­til a run-off poll was held.Speak­ing at a brief­ing at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter Wednes­day's Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing on the is­sue, Row­ley said:

"This of­fers the op­por­tu­ni­ty of a de­feat­ed par­ty to hold on to pow­er while this sec­ondary elec­tion is done. It's a ma­jor threat to T&T's peace, sta­bil­i­ty and good or­der."There's the po­ten­tial for the first time not to have a smooth han­dover of Gov­ern­ment. It's a Tro­jan horse with the po­ten­tial to bring down the em­pire of sta­bil­i­ty in T&T. We have re­ject­ed it and we will re­sist it."Row­ley urged the pop­u­la­tion to re­act, not­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment "on­ly re­act­ed to mas­sive pub­lic re­jec­tion."

He said: "It's now for the peo­ple to en­vis­age the day when the Gov­ern­ment tries that. We are ask­ing the pub­lic to stave off the in­sta­bil­i­ty and re­ject the leg­is­la­tion... to be aware of the sit­u­a­tion and ex­press their views to the Gov­ern­ment."It's on­ly when the peo­ple re­act en masse the Gov­ern­ment backs away from what it's do­ing. We have hours to Mon­day's de­bate to stave this off.

"It's for the pop­u­la­tion to ex­press their po­si­tion and to stand up and say they will not ac­cept this. If the pop­u­la­tion re­mains qui­et and al­lows Gov­ern­ment to pass this, the detri­ment I de­scribed will be­fall us."The PNM's coun­cil on Wednes­day passed a res­o­lu­tion au­tho­ris­ing the lead­er­ship to "do all things law­ful, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and right in de­fence of T&T's democ­ra­cy and call on the right-think­ing peo­ple of T&T to re­ject the mea­sures in the bill,"

Row­ley al­so re­it­er­at­ed that Par­lia­ment's new Stand­ing Or­ders or­dered a fixed re­cess be­tween Ju­ly and Sep­tem­ber and the Par­lia­ment could on­ly meet in the pe­ri­od be­tween in an emer­gency but Gov­ern­ment had not said what the emer­gency was for Mon­day's sit­ting.Out of the three con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments which Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es, Row­ley said the rec­om­men­da­tion for a two-term lim­it for prime min­is­ters was a non-is­sue and was not need­ed as a mat­ter of ur­gency.

He said the re­call of MPs would cre­ate a dis­rup­tion since it was pro­posed for the fourth year of a term, when a gov­ern­ment should be de­liv­er­ing, and re­quired two thirds of peo­ple on a vot­ers' list to ap­peal for the re­call.So that pro­pos­al had lit­tle chance of suc­cess and there was no ur­gency for it, ei­ther, he added.But the run-off poll, which will be trig­gered when a can­di­date fails to get 50 per cent of the votes cast, was the re­al "poi­son" and the rea­son Gov­ern­ment was hav­ing the sit­ting, Row­ley said.