Former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj says Congress of the People (COP) founder Winston Dookeran’s dissenting vote on the Constitution (Amendment) Bill was not enough to show his loyalty to citizens. Maharaj said Dookeran, along with COP chairman Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan, should resign and join the fight against an oppressive government.
During the Movement for Social Justice’s public forum on the bill at Paramount Building, San Fernando, he said the bill was drafted to give the People’s Partnership an unfair advantage in next year’s general election. With only Dookeran and Seepersad-Bachan dissenting in Parliament on Monday, and Arima MP Rodger Samuel abstaining, he said leaving the Government would set an example for other COP members.
He said he now had no hope for COP leader Prakash Ramadhar, noting he had caught a case of “Eat ah Food Syndrome.” “I read the COP manifesto and the constitution, and I read everything about the COP. With the greatest respect to Winston Dookeran, speaking in Parliament and going to mingle with them, and being part of the Parliament, is not support for the people,” Maharaj said. “He has to walk, he has to resign. That is the only way he will demonstrate to the country that he means what he said.
“You cannot sit in a Cabinet for four years and be part and parcel of the oppression of the Government to the people, and then come one day in the Parliament and make a brilliant speech—but then on Thursday, you go and sit in the Cabinet with them.
“That is not how the system works. Carolyn (Seepersad-Bachan) has to walk if she means business for the people of T&T, that is how the system works. As a matter of fact, let us be honest with ourselves: the COP members sat down in the Cabinet for four years and they were part and parcel of what happened in T&T.”
Maharaj said Government made several errors in passing the bill, as it should not have been passed with a simple majority. He said it was desperation that caused the PP to draft the bill because it was losing support in its traditional areas. “This is clearly the measure. The Partnership has been doing polls and they are realising that in the marginal constituencies they cannot get the support they got in 2010. They realised that elections are out of their hands.
“They also realised that in traditional areas, they have lost support and they can lose some of the traditional seats.” He added, “What they want to do is come up with a scheme in order to get an unfair advantage by using the Treasury and state resources to win this election. “Whichever way you look at it, this is a measure for the Government to steal the election of T&T.”
UK attorney reviewing bill
Maharaj said the court has the power to strike down any act of Parliament that is deemed unconstitutional and that the controversial bill was being reviewed by a leading Queen’s Counsel in England. Maharaj did not give the attorney’s name, but said he had represented T&T at the Privy Counsel in several matters and also appeared on behalf of Commonwealth citizens in constitutional law matters.
Maharaj said the QC’s preliminary finding was that the bill should not have been passed with a simple majority vote. He said a team of local lawyers was also reviewing the bill and he was optimistic that even if Government went ahead with the legislation and it was assented to by President Anthony Carmona, the court would strike it down.
He explained: “Under the Constitution, any citizen or any political party can approach the court and say that the Parliament has violated the rights of the people, as with chapter one of the Constitution or any other provisions of the Constitution. The court has the power, and the court is regarded as the guardian of the Constitution and the rights of the people.
“There has been a precedent in T&T in determining whether laws passed by the Parliament were unconstitutional. The last law was the Equal Opportunity (Act) law in which the court of T&T had declared that the law was not passed by a special majority and it was unconstitutional.
“The matter went to the Privy Council in London and the Privy Council decided that the courts of T&T were wrong and that the law was constitutional, even though it was passed with a simple majority, because it did not take away the power of the judiciary.”