Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form, Baren­dra Sinanan, SC says cit­i­zens want speedy tri­als, more ac­count­abil­i­ty and gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tion to fea­ture among any changes to the Con­sti­tu­tion.

He said pro­pos­als on these will be pre­sent­ed to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley when the fi­nal re­port con­tain­ing rec­om­men­da­tions is sub­mit­ted to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley by Fri­day.

“From the peo­ple’s point of view they want to see their rep­re­sen­ta­tives more of­ten, they com­plain about not see­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tives. This is par­lia­men­tary and lo­cal and more so lo­cal, fun­ny enough, a lot of com­plaints from peo­ple was that they don’t see their lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives,” Sinanan said.

Speak­ing dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, the for­mer Speak­er of the House not­ed that while rec­om­men­da­tions from the pub­lic mir­rored those from pre­vi­ous re­ports, in­clud­ing the Sir Hugh Wood­ing Com­mis­sion of 1974, oth­ers jumped out at him, in­clud­ing calls for greater trans­paren­cy.

“What came out to me or what stood out to me was ac­count­abil­i­ty. Ac­count­abil­i­ty of of­fice­hold­ers, ac­count­abil­i­ty of pub­lic ser­vants, trans­paren­cy and jus­tice.

“A speedy tri­al was al­so one of the rec­om­men­da­tions. The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was com­ment­ed on quite a lot be­cause peo­ple are not im­pressed with it,” Sinanan ex­plained.

Just last week, the Ap­peal Court, in pre­sid­ing over a case, ruled that un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion there was no right to speedy tri­als.

In Jan­u­ary, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that Cab­i­net had ap­proved the ap­point­ment of the sev­en-mem­ber ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee to for­mu­late terms of ref­er­ence for a Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Back then it was not­ed that oth­er ef­forts had been made to­wards con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form in­clud­ing the ap­point­ment by for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning of the Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany Com­mit­tee to ex­am­ine an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent. Dur­ing the tenure of the UNC, there was al­so the Prakash Ra­mad­har Com­mit­tee ex­am­in­ing pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The Prime Min­is­ter pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that the team was not asked to craft a Con­sti­tu­tion but to fa­cil­i­tate and ad­vance the na­tion­al dis­course on the sub­ject.

Con­sul­ta­tions of­fi­cial­ly be­gan in April through­out the coun­try.

Sinanan said he was sat­is­fied with the ex­er­cise and what his team was able to achieve.

“We re­al­ly ac­com­plished a tremen­dous amount of work. For me, I was very for­tu­nate as chair­man to have some bril­liant cit­i­zens as part of the com­mit­tee. At the end of the day, I came to one con­clu­sion we do have a lot of tal­ent­ed peo­ple in this coun­try,” Sinanan said.

The oth­er mem­bers of the com­mit­tee in­clud­ed Dr Ter­rence Far­rell, for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor, econ­o­mist, and lawyer; Ray Sandy—re­cent­ly re­tired To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly chief ad­min­is­tra­tor; Jacquie Samp­son-Meiguel, at­tor­ney and re­tired Clerk of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives; Win­ston Rud­der-re­tired per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, now chair­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion; Ha­ji Nizam Mo­hammed—for­mer House Speak­er (1987-1991), em­i­nent lawyer, for­mer NAR Tabaquite MP and Hema Nar­i­nesingh, an ac­coun­tant. Sinanan al­so hailed the role of ex­perts both re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in shap­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions.

“We did meet with about 28 spe­cial­ists, peo­ple who spe­cialise in con­sti­tu­tion­al law, the psy­chol­o­gy, crim­i­nol­o­gy. We met with Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran, Ramesh Ma­haraj, judges, the Chief Jus­tice, the Caribbean Court of Ap­peal Pres­i­dent Jus­tice Adri­an Saun­ders, we had peo­ple from Ja­maica, we con­sult­ed with al­so Jus­tice Cameron from South Africa, we were for­tu­nate to get a chap from In­dia,” he ex­plained.

It is ex­pect­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter will con­vene a na­tion­al con­fer­ence to dis­cuss the re­port. Sinanan said he was hope­ful the rec­om­men­da­tions made would be sup­port­ed and sub­se­quent­ly adopt­ed.