Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­dus­try, In­vest­ment and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Vas­ant Bharath says the Mar­ket & Opin­ion Re­search In­ter­na­tion­al (Mori) find­ings have pro­vid­ed sound ev­i­dence that most of the pop­u­la­tion is in favour of Con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form."The ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens in T&T sup­port Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts to de­liv­er more pow­er to the peo­ple over politi­cians and the gov­er­nance process, a firm be­lief that has been cor­rob­o­rat­ed by the find­ings of MORI Caribbean poll," said Bharath in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

He said The MORI poll had pro­vid­ed the em­pir­i­cal da­ta to con­firm the Gov­ern­ment's find­ings that at least 55 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion agreed and want­ed more pow­er over the gov­er­nance process and politi­cians.In his state­ment, Bharath avowed Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to move for­ward with de­bate on the high­ly con­tentious Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill, in the Sen­ate on Tues­day.

Bharath said in ad­di­tion to ex­pan­sive con­sul­ta­tion, the Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished and close­ly mon­i­tored feed­back chan­nels to keep abreast of the thoughts of peo­ple, and it was on the strength of that kind of in­for­ma­tion that the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to pro­ceed with mea­sures to ap­ply term lim­its for the Prime Min­is­ter, de­liv­er the peo­ple's right of re­call and sec­ond bal­lot run off vot­ing."The sur­vey, done by MORI and com­mis­sioned by the Gov­ern­ment, was car­ried out ear­li­er this month, but the re­sults were nev­er made pub­lic.

In fur­ther ex­am­in­ing the MORI da­ta, Bharath in his state­ment, said what was al­so very im­por­tant to note was that the re­port found 50 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion agreed that re­forms would im­prove the qual­i­ty of life, and 55 per cent agreed it would help im­prove the way T&T is gov­erned.How­ev­er, he was al­so quick to say that the Gov­ern­ment had al­so tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, di­ver­gent views on the is­sue. He said it was ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to en­sure that even af­ter con­sul­ta­tion, an on­go­ing process took emerg­ing views in­to ac­count.

"As with every­thing that the Gov­ern­ment has suc­cess­ful­ly pur­sued and de­liv­ered, how­ev­er, we are ul­ti­mate­ly guid­ed by the ma­jor­i­ty," said Bharath.

He added: "Hav­ing said that, we must al­so be con­fi­dent in the mo­tives of those who don't ful­ly agree. The pri­ma­ry mo­tive must be the ben­e­fit to the peo­ple and our coun­try but some have sought to in­tro­duce pan­ic and fear ref­er­ences to re­form, such as 'con­tro­ver­sy' and 'cri­sis'. There is no con­tro­ver­sy, there is no cri­sis. These are mea­sures that are sup­port­ed by the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple who have de­cid­ed that they want more pow­er over the politi­cians," the min­is­ter not­ed.

But even as the min­is­ter re­leased this state­ment yes­ter­day, op­pos­ing views from NGO Fix­in' T&T came fast and fu­ri­ous.Group founder Kirk Wait­he, in an in­ter­view, chal­lenged Bharath to show proof of the "ex­pan­sive con­sul­ta­tion" on the run-off be­fore Au­gust 4, 2014."Runoff is not even men­tioned in the Gov­ern­ment's 'Pow­er to the Peo­ple' pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign," he said.Wait­he said the pub­lic de­bate on con­sti­tu­tion re­form was healthy and his or­gan­i­sa­tion hoped it would con­tin­ue.

He said the con­tentious bill must be with­drawn by the Gov­ern­ment; re­ject­ed by the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors (like the Sol­dier Bill) and it should be sent to a joint se­lect com­mit­tee which must be chaired by an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor and man­dat­ed to tra­verse all of T&T to en­gage in tru­ly mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion."We main­tain that the most ur­gent busi­ness for all 41 MPs is to bring, pass and en­act leg­is­la­tion that gov­erns par­ty fi­nanc­ing, cam­paign fi­nanc­ing and pro­cure­ment ahead of the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's brazen at­tempt to vi­o­late our vote must not be tol­er­at­ed," said Wait­he.The NGO staged a vig­il yes­ter­day out­side the Par­lia­ment. It was ex­pect­ed to be­gin at 6 pm with those at­tend­ing ex­pect­ed to air their views on the bill.How­ev­er, up to well over the time, no crowd had gath­ered. But Wait­he said the vig­il will con­tin­ue un­til when­ev­er the runoff is stopped to­mor­row.

He told the T&T Guardian the vig­il was an ex­ten­sion of the NGO's pub­lic protest­ing which be­gan on Au­gust 9 out­side the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence in Philip­pine.The group was al­so ex­pect­ed to be joined by the Ter­tiary Stu­dents Union of T&T (TSUTT), which made a call on its Face­book page ear­li­er in the day for young peo­ple to come out in their num­bers to join the vig­il.When in­ter­viewed, one of TSUTT's di­rec­tors, Stephen Math­e­son, said it was the group's man­date to do all in its pow­er to stop this bill from be­ing pro­claimed.

TSUTT raised con­cerns on the process in which the bill should have been in­tro­duced and the wrong­ful man­ner in which it was."What the Gov­ern­ment has done is, in short, trick­ery," said Math­e­son.He added: "The run-off sec­tion of the bill in par­tic­u­lar is what dis­turbed the group. In close ex­am­i­na­tion of the bill, this sec­tion should not have been al­lowed to be passed with just a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty. And we al­so feel that con­sul­ta­tion should have been is­land wide, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause of this sec­tion of the bill."

TSUTT is made up of var­i­ous ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the Hugh Wood­ing Law School, School of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence (SBCS), T&T Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (TTHTI) and Cipri­ani Labour of Col­lege and Cor­po­ra­tive Stud­ies.