By Sean Douglas Friday, November 6 2009

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COP IN: COP political leader Winston Dookeran, right, refers to yesterday's Newsday during a news conference with party officials Timothy Hamel-Smith,...

COP leader Winston Dookeran yesterday said the episode over the $2 million flag at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Port-of-Spain shows the Government has a wrong sense of priorities which include their own aggrandisement. He was addressing a COP media conference yesterday at the Hotel Normandie, St Ann’s.

“I too felt the sense of outrage and outburst at the revelation of the flag issue. I don’t think it’s the issue of the flag by itself,” Dookeran said.

He said the flag issue reflects the public’s sense of outrage over the Government’s priorities which, he alleged, put the Government’s personal aggrandisement ahead of the people’s issues.

“It also raises the issue of why is it that the Government cannot really come clean on a very simple issue. That issue undermines the very essence of our democracy in Trinidad and Tobago — that there is now little or no trust in what the Government says and what government ministers say,” he said.

Dookeran again hit Tuesday’s meeting of Prime Minister Patrick Manning and Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday by saying any new TT Constitution must be based on a polling of citizens’ views, and “not by a handshake”.

Dookeran, along with COP officials Timothy Hamel-Smith, Prakash Ramadhar and Robert Mayers, said reform of the Constitution must only come by the sovereign will of the people, as the deciding factor.

“We do not believe that the Parliament or the leaders in Parliament have the prerogative to make that decision on behalf of our people... It should be done by way of either referendum or some form of testing the people’s opinion,” he said.

He said it was a mockery for any deal to be struck by Manning and Panday on a new Constitution, in the midst of a constitutional reform exercise that is ongoing, without waiting for the outcome of that exercise. Dookeran vowed to embark on a programme of action to oppose what he called the “Manday constitution” (named after Manning and Panday).

Hamel-Smith, an attorney, said the Manning/Panday deal to work towards a new Constitution has been made allegedly without the duo saying a word about consultation.

“One can only conclude that the recent La Guerre and Ryan consultation and the current Ghany consultation is merely a farce, a democratic hoax a la Mugabe, with no intention to make it a participatory process,” Hamel-Smith said.

He said citizens see the current Constitution as giving too much power to one individual — the Prime Minister — and this problem is worsened by the Government’s new proposals. “Now instead, what we are seeing is the super concentration of power in one person by combining the power of president with that of prime minister — a position which in reality produces a ‘constitutional emperor’ ruling by decree — where not a damn dog must be allowed to bark, certainly not a Rottweiler or a RamJack,” said Hamel-Smith.