Panday offers constitutional model, rejects COP's unity call as rude and insolent

Basdeo Panday offered his thoughts on a new constitution for Trinidad and Tobago when he addressed members of his United National Congress (UNC) Sunday at the UNC national congress at the Rienzi Complex in central Trinidad.

The former prime minister proposed a radically reformed constitution to allow a president elected by the people. The president so elected, he said, would then choose the people who would form the government.

Panday also insisted that Members of Parliament must not be considered for cabinet posts or to be government advisers.

Panday also renewed his call for the present first-past-the-post system to be replaced by proportional representation and he said it's time to scrap the unelected Senate. His constitutional proposal would have a single chamber in Parliament, which would be expanded to have between 90 and 100 members.

He told delegates such a system would have better representation and it would guarantee that the separation of powers is retained and strengthened.

Panday argued that the existing system allows the prime minister to control both the executive and the legislature.

There are concerns that the present constitutional debate would lead to an executive president with absolute power to control all arms of government and all the principal institutions in the country. Critics say it would be a formula for an institutionalized presidential dictatorship.

Panday also spoke about unity, noting that despite what is said and being done "nothing seems to be happening". And he called for a fresh move to reach the rank and file, the "grasroots" of the country.

The UNC had invited Congress of the People (COP) leader Winston Dookeran to the congress but he sent two senior COP members.

Despite the symbolic olive branch offer and the presence COP members, Panday ventured into his well-known offensive against COP, suggested that COP's unity initiative is bogus and called the party "rude and insolent".

"Can you imagine a political party that failed to win a single seat in the last parliamentary elections telling us in the UNC with 15 seats, more or less, that if we want unity we must dissolve the UNC and join them?

"That suggestion is not only naive, provocative and insulting (and), it also displays a total lack of understanding of the political reality.

"For some to suggest that before they will even sit down to discuss unity, the leader of another political party must commit hari kari before there can be unity is to be not only equally puerile, but rude and insolent."

In a reference to the Ramjack members of his own party, Panday said no one should believe that the UNC would tolerate indiscipline.

He added that the UNC must never become "a haven for international con men or an avenue for money laundering or for those who have made it a career of betraying this party."

Panday concluded that the bickering within the UNC is over, saying "peace and stability have returned to the UNC". He said that is the cue for the UNC to embark "on a massive mobilisation of the party."