Prime Minister Patrick Manning has again said he doesn't want to be Trinidad and Tobago's executive president, telling supporters in Tobago the position holds no attraction for him."My concern is not personal aggrandizement. I have said it before that politics must not be the pursuit of fame and power and fortune. Politics, my dear friends, if it must have any meaning to the people of Trinidad and Tobago, must have a social dimension. A dimension of selfless service, that is what it is all about," he said.
Two previous draft constitutions have proposed an executive presidency, which has led to speculation that Manning craves the job so he would have absolute control of the Executive, the Parliament and the Judiciary.
But he dismissed those concerns, noting that constitutional reform is for the national good. "When we make proposals like these, we do not make them to serve ourselves. We make those proposals because we feel that at the end of the day it will lead to a better structure of governance," Manning said in Scarborough Friday night.
One proposal for electing the president is to change the present system where an electoral college of all members of the Parliament elect a president for a five-year term to one which uses a wider sampling of votes similar to how the United States elects its leader.
Neither system allows a one-person, one-vote process similar to what applies currently for choosing members of Parliament.
Critics have said Manning has already shown that he wants to be the president pointing to the use of the country's Coat of Arms on his official car, a privilege reserved only for the president's vehicles.
For his part the prime minister has declared that there is nothing illegal about that.
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