By COREY CONNELLY Wednesday, August 19 2009

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PNM to the bone: A serious-faced PNM supporter pays attention to Prime Minister Patrick Manning's speech at Sangre Grande on Monday night. ...

Prime Minister Patrick Manning says proportional representation will not be endorsed as an electoral model in Trinidad and Tobago within the draft working document on constitutional reform.

Addressing supporters at the party’s Monday night lecture forum in Sangre Grande, Manning ruled out proportional representation as an option, saying it led to the formation of coalition governments, and posed a serious threat to social stability in the country.

Manning, who celebrated his 63rd birthday on Monday, recalled that the National Alliance For Reconstruction (NAR) was one of the first political parties to establish a coalition.

The NAR was led by former Prime Minister and President Arthur NR Robinson.

“They didn’t know they were a coalition..But by 1988 you had Club 88. The factors became clear, and you realise how weak the government was,” he said.

Manning said when one reflected on the track record of the NAR during its five-year stint in government “they really do not have much to show.”

He added, “That is a situation that must stop in the future. Proportional representation leads to coalition and weak governments.”

The PM also recalled that a minister in the Sri Lankan government, responsible for judicial affairs, had told his audience during a seminar in London in 2000 that proportional representation could give the impression that one ethnic group was superior to the other.

“He said if the problem is geography, proportional representation might work,” Manning told his audience.

“ If, however, your problem is ethnicity, or race, don’t touch proportional representation, because what it tells us is that it ensures the supremacy of one race over the next, and it can lead to serious unrest and destabilisation of the society,” he added.

The PM’s stance came weeks after chairman of the National Association for the Empowerment of African People (NAEAP) Prof Selwyn Cudjoe announced that Africans were now in the minority in the country.

During an Emancipation Day reception, Cudjoe referred to statistics which stated that 40 percent of the population was East Indian while 37.5 percent was African.

“This divide is likely to grow as time goes on. If the ethnic trends in voting continue, it is likely that in the next ten years we might see the same pattern that has emerged in Guyana in which the dominant group will hold power in perpetuity,” he had said.