DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) is call­ing for a pub­lic ref­er­en­dum on con­sti­tu­tion re­form rather than a "Man­day" re­form based on a hand­shake. Po­lit­i­cal leader Win­ston Dook­er­an made the call yes­ter­day, dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at Nor­mandie Ho­tel, St Ann's. This, af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day met and de­cid­ed "to work to­wards agree­ing to a new" con­sti­tu­tion. They were al­so at one on an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent for T&T. Call­ing it a "Man­day con­sti­tu­tion," Dook­er­an said: "De­ci­sions like this must not be on the ba­sis of a hand­shake...This was a mock­ery.

"We do not be­lieve that the lead­ers of Par­lia­ment have the pre­rog­a­tive to make such a de­ci­sion on be­half of the peo­ple." He added that this must be done with the to­tal sup­port of the peo­ple and by way of a ref­er­en­dum or some way of test­ing the cit­i­zens' opin­ion. Dook­er­an said it was a con­sti­tu­tion that would em­pow­er one per­son which was con­tra­dic­to­ry to a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem. He said the COP would be em­bark­ing on a pro­gramme of ac­tion which would so­lic­it the voice of the peo­ple.