Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day have agreed to work to­wards agree­ing on a new con­sti­tu­tion in this term and are al­so at one on the idea that there should be an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent for T&T.

The Op­po­si­tion will sub­mit its con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form pro­pos­als to Gov­ern­ment af­ter the up­com­ing Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in T&T. Fur­ther, the Op­po­si­tion has agreed to study six pieces of an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing wire­tap­ping pro­pos­als and ones to out­law gangs, to see if it will sup­port Gov­ern­ment to pass the spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty bills. The de­vel­op­ments em­anat­ed from a one-hour meet­ing be­tween Man­ning and Pan­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre at St Ann's which Man­ning said was "very fruit­ful." Al­so at­tend­ing were At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and UNC vice-chair­man Vas­ant Bharath. Stand­ing along­side Pan­day and ad­dress­ing re­porters af­ter the meet­ing, Man­ning said the con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues and Gov­ern­ment's lat­est work­ing doc­u­ment on the is­sue com­prised the bulk of the lead­ers' dis­cus­sions. Man­ning said: "We agreed to work to­wards agree­ing on a new con­sti­tu­tion. "As I had to tell the Op­po­si­tion Leader, I don't know how long I will last in pol­i­tics again and the way things are go­ing he may very well last longer than I do.

"But what­ev­er, it ap­pears both of us would like a new con­sti­tu­tion and we agreed to work to­wards that achieve­ment in this term." Man­ning said Pan­day put sev­er­al pro­pos­als on the ta­ble. These will be sub­mit­ted in writ­ing in or­der to be stud­ied. The Op­po­si­tion gave the com­mit­ment to study the pro­pos­als. Both par­ties agreed to meet again af­ter this was done. Man­ning said most of the leg­is­la­tion re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty and in­cludes leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­larise the Spe­cial An­ti Crime Unit of TT. Pan­day said con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form would re­quire a con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage, ne­ces­si­tat­ing Gov­ern­ment/Op­po­si­tion co-op­er­a­tion and yes­ter­day's ex­er­cise was an at­tempt to have con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. He not­ed the cur­rent Con­sti­tu­tion was 48 years old. Pan­day said: "We'll try to ad­vance the process of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. There are fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences be­tween us–the ba­sic one be­ing Pro­por­tion­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, but the idea is to go the pop­u­la­tion and ex­plain. "I'm sure Gov­ern­ment will put for­ward its view and we will al­so and in the end the pop­u­la­tion will pre­vail." At a sub­se­quent news con­fer­ence, Pan­day said both lead­ers agreed there should be an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent, but there were fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences on the elec­tion of this of­fice.

The Op­po­si­tion pro­posed:

�2 That the ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent be elect­ed by the peo­ple on the one-man-one-vote ba­sis;

�2 that the pres­i­dent choose his Cab­i­net from the best peo­ple, not nec­es­sar­i­ly from the Par­lia­ment;

�2 that the pres­i­dent's du­ty would be to come to the Par­lia­ment with a plan of ac­tion and seek fund­ing for this; and,

�2 a uni-cam­er­al Par­lia­ment, com­pris­ing a House of 90 to 100 peo­ple elect­ed on pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion ba­sis.