Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The ob­jec­tiv­i­ty of the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form com­mit­tee was chal­lenged on Wednes­day dur­ing a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion in the Bor­ough of Point Fortin.

The con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form com­mit­tee head­ed by Chair­man Baren­dra Sinanan SC were not the on­ly ones seek­ing an­swers on the fu­ture of the body of laws.

Open­ing re­marks by com­mit­tee mem­ber Nizam Mo­hammed were in­ter­rupt­ed by a mem­ber of the pub­lic who said: “No dis­re­spect but I am al­most 50 years and there is noth­ing go­ing on about this. I’ve heard this many times. I’ve heard about up­grad­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion and re­form beat­en in­to our heads.

“As a mat­ter of fact, over and over, lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form over and over and I’m go­ing on 50 this year and noth­ing. Why should I trust—and no dis­re­spect again—a bunch of men who were placed by the gov­ern­ment to tell me it go­ing to hap­pen?”

Mem­bers of the pub­lic at the ses­sion al­so point­ed to five pre­vi­ous un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts at strength­en­ing par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy and asked whether the lat­est ex­er­cise was part of a po­lit­i­cal agen­da.

An­oth­er mem­ber of the com­mit­tee, Ter­rence Far­rell, tried to al­lay those con­cerns, stat­ing that they were “very con­scious of the fail­ures that would have tak­en place over the course of the last 50 years.”

He said: “The way in which we look at it is that the fact that every ad­min­is­tra­tion—NAR, UNC, PNM—that has come in­to of­fice has made an at­tempt to re­form. Some peo­ple may think it is a po­lit­i­cal ploy. Maybe it is.

“We are not politi­cians, ex­cept for an ex-politi­cian, but we are not politi­cians up here. The way we look at it is the rea­son why it is be­ing done is be­cause there is a per­ceived need for change.”

Mo­hammed, a for­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed, said he un­der­stood the ap­pre­hen­sion but em­pha­sised that the ex­er­cise is “a ve­hi­cle to­wards de­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­sol­i­da­tion.”

He urged: “Can we put aside all this thing about the pol­i­tics and look at Trinidad and To­ba­go? I am telling you there is a new type of gov­ern­ment brew­ing up in this coun­try and it is about guns and vi­o­lence.”

Af­ter de­fend­ing the com­mit­tee’s ob­jec­tiv­i­ty, Mo­hammed said the lack of mass sup­port for the ex­er­cise has been a chal­lenge.

“I was on a Zoom pro­gramme in­ter­na­tion­al­ly talk­ing about con­sti­tu­tion re­form on Sun­day and some­body from the uni­ver­si­ty said we are won­der­ing if this is a po­lit­i­cal gim­mick. You see we don’t trust our­selves any­more and be­cause of that we are not get­ting the kind of mass sup­port,” he said.

Oth­er mem­bers of the com­mit­tee, which is chaired by for­mer House Speak­er Baren­dra Sinanan are re­tired THA chief ad­min­is­tra­tor Raye Sandy, ac­coun­tant Hema Nar­i­nesingh, re­tired Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Win­ston Rud­der and at­tor­ney and for­mer clerk of the House Jacquie Samp­son-Meiguel.