KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

With less than 10 days to go un­til the coun­try’s 61st an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, to be cel­e­brat­ed on Au­gust 31, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), Gre­go­ry Aboud, has made a bold call for the rewrit­ing of the na­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion.

Speak­ing at a ro­tary club meet­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Aboud called on cit­i­zens to de­mand a new Con­sti­tu­tion that would al­low the peo­ple to elect who they want in par­lia­ment, and not the par­ty in pow­er to do it.

He said at present, there is no ac­count­abil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly from those in Par­lia­ment to ad­dress is­sues fac­ing cit­i­zens.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone fol­low­ing the meet­ing, Aboud said the new con­sti­tu­tion should al­low for pri­ma­ry elec­tions, com­plete­ly re­move ser­vice com­mis­sions and rein­tro­duce line man­age­ment.

All of this, he be­lieved, would al­low for more ac­count­abil­i­ty to take place.

Aboud said, “The per­son elect­ed at the mo­ment to rep­re­sent the par­ty is cho­sen by the par­ty and many times con­stituen­cies have put up can­di­dates and they have been re­moved by the lead­er­ship of the par­ty. That has to end.”

“The peo­ple who run in the seat should be the choice of the peo­ple, not the choice of the par­ty. And, the peo­ple who run in the seat should be elect­ed sep­a­rate­ly to the par­ty so that if there is a pol­i­cy be­ing pro­mot­ed by the par­ty that the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment (MP) does not feel is in the in­ter­est of his or her con­stituents, that pol­i­cy could be op­posed by the MP even though he comes from the par­ty that is propos­ing it. This is true democ­ra­cy, and this is how peo­ple get true rep­re­sen­ta­tion,” he added.

Aboud said these fun­da­men­tal changes to the con­sti­tu­tion to re-in­tro­duce ac­count­abil­i­ty and to sep­a­rate the MPs from the par­ty so that they could rep­re­sent their con­stituents would make a huge dif­fer­ence.

He said un­til these changes are made, he is afraid the cur­rent state of the coun­try will not im­prove.

He added that is­sues such as crime, poor health care, bad in­fra­struc­ture are some of the main is­sues fac­ing cit­i­zens that need to be ad­dressed.