Shal­iza?Has­sanali

The ma­jor­i­ty of re­spon­dents in a re­cent­ly re­leased Mar­ket & Opin­ion Re­search In­ter­na­tion­al (Mori) Caribbean poll be­lieve the con­tro­ver­sial Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill, which will be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, is de­signed to help the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship win the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

The poll, which was com­mis­sioned by the Gov­ern­ment, al­so showed that cit­i­zens were not in­ter­est­ed in con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and gave greater pri­or­i­ty to crime, health, em­ploy­ment, hous­ing and even cor­rup­tion in the Gov­ern­ment as the na­tion­al is­sues to be tack­led.The sur­vey, which in­volved tele­phone in­ter­views with 512 adult re­spon­dents on 11 mat­ters re­lat­ed to con­sti­tu­tion re­form, was ti­tled Lis­ten­ing to the Peo­ple–Wave 8. It was con­duct­ed from Au­gust 8 to 11 but the find­ings were not made pub­lic.

In fact, it was on the fi­nal day of this sur­vey that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar tabled the bill in Par­lia­ment. The bill makes pro­vi­sion for fixed terms for prime min­is­ters, the right of re­call of MPs and a runoff vote in cas­es where the win­ner in any con­stituen­cy gets less than 50 per cent of the vote.A copy of the sur­vey was ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian and its va­lid­i­ty was con­firmed by an of­fi­cial from Mori's Lon­don of­fice.

Re­spon­dents were asked whether the leg­is­la­tion was de­signed to help the PP win next year's elec­tion and 47 per cent of the re­spon­dents agreed, while 35 per cent dis­agreed and eight per cent said they did not know.

Re­spon­dents were al­so asked what they con­sid­ered to be the most im­por­tant is­sues for the coun­try. Of the 11 is­sues out­lined in the poll, crime/po­lice topped the list at 86 per cent, fol­lowed by health/hos­pi­tals with 68 per cent and cor­rup­tion in the Gov­ern­ment at 64 per cent. Jobs/em­ploy­ment was the most im­por­tant is­sue for 47 per cent of the re­spon­dents, while it was hous­ing for 34 per cent. On­ly 17 per cent felt con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form was im­por­tant.

Re­spon­dents were al­so asked, based on what they knew or heard, if they would sup­port or op­pose the Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­al for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. Over­all, 35 per cent said they would sup­port it, while 11 per cent were op­posed.On the is­sue of re­call, 70 per cent were in favour, while 22 per cent were op­posed and six per cent were neu­tral.On the runoff pro­vi­sion, 54 per cent of re­spon­dents said they would sup­port the mea­sure, while 28 per cent op­posed and 13 per cent nei­ther sup­port­ed nor op­posed.

The ma­jor­i­ty of re­spon­dents sup­port­ed term lim­its for the prime min­is­ter, with 55 per cent in agree­ment and 36 per cent op­pos­ing.In­ter­est­ing­ly, 55 per cent of the re­spon­dents agreed that re­form would give more pow­er to vot­ers, while 26 per cent dis­agreed.The poll al­so ques­tioned re­spon­dents on whether the re­forms would help im­prove the qual­i­ty of life of T&T cit­i­zens. The re­sults showed that 50 per cent agreed, while 35 per cent dis­agreed. Nine per cent did not know.

Al­so, 55 per cent of the re­spon­dents agreed that re­form would help im­prove the way in which T&T was gov­erned, while 27 per cent did not.The poll fur­ther showed that 28 per cent had con­cerns about con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, while 61 per cent did not.