Two po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts are now ques­tion­ing the amend­ments pro­posed by the Gov­ern­ment to fix the pro­tract­ed dead­lock in To­ba­go.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to be clear­er on the pro­posed amend­ments to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Act.

Row­ley, at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day said that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi is cur­rent­ly draft­ing two amend­ments to the THA Act which is ex­pect­ed to be brought be­fore Cab­i­net for ap­proval be­fore be­ing tak­en to Par­lia­ment for de­bate in the next few weeks.

The two drafts in­clude propos­ing a sin­gle per­son to break any dead­lock and the sec­ond would seek to in­crease the To­ba­go seats from 12 to ei­ther 13, 15, or 19.

James yes­ter­day said “de­tails” were miss­ing.

“Is the Prime Min­is­ter propos­ing that a per­son or an of­fice should be re­spon­si­ble for break­ing any fu­ture dead­locks?” James asked.

James said that the Prime Min­is­ter need­ed to clar­i­fy who the “some­one” meant.

“He has not gone in­to suf­fi­cient de­tail and was not pushed to by the me­dia,” James said.

“The Prime Min­is­ter be­lat­ed­ly thought about adopt­ing some­thing his par­ty al­ready utilised to rec­ti­fy the 18/18 split in the 2001 gen­er­al elec­tions. Why didn’t they fix To­ba­go at the same time?” he asked.

James al­so took the PNM to task for “drag­ging” its po­lit­i­cal feet in rem­e­dy­ing the 12 seats in To­ba­go.

He said that since the 2001 dead­lock in Trinidad be­tween the PNM and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), the Gov­ern­ment should have put things in place to en­sure a sim­i­lar dead­lock was not pos­si­ble in To­ba­go.

“But they nev­er did and I be­lieve that was de­lib­er­ate,” James said.

James sur­mised that the PNM de­lib­er­ate­ly did not in­crease the num­ber of seats in To­ba­go be­cause it de­pend­ed on the To­ba­go seats to hold pow­er in T&T.

“Keep­ing To­ba­go guar­an­tees pow­er for the PNM,” James said.

Mean­while, Dr Hamid Ghany yes­ter­day said that there is a much eas­i­er way to re­solve the on­go­ing im­passe by draw­ing lots.

“It would be much eas­i­er to amend Sec­tion 7 of the THA Act to in­clude a tie-break­er mech­a­nism for elect­ing a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer of the THA by draw­ing lots,” he said.