Electoral seats increased from 36 to 41

Five new seats in the 2007 General Elections. This is the startling recommendation contained in the 2004 Report of the Elections and Boundaries on the Review of Constituency Boundaries which was tabled in the House of Representatives yesterday. With a total of 41 seats, the possibility of a tie in a two-horse race has been removed. The report recommended that the number of constituencies be in-creased from 36 to 41. All the  additional seats are in Trinidad. As Deputy Speaker Hedwidge Bereaux tabled the report at the start of the proceedings, MPs lost interest in all else and could be seen busily analysing the results. Initial assessments revealed that if the 2002 general election results were to be imposed on the new boundary arrangements, the PNM would get two additional seats while the UNC would get three, making it a 22:19 Parliament in the PNM’s favour. The current Parliament is 20:16.

Parliamentary approval is needed for the Commission’s recommendations to become law. Signalling the Government’s preparedness to accept the report, Prime Minister Patrick Manning pointed out yesterday that  PNM historically has always accepted the EBC recommendations on boundaries. Manning confirmed that of the five seats created, three would go to the UNC providing existing voting patterns were maintained. “The extra seat (Princes Town South/Tableland)  has been cut in such a way that (it) has gone to the UNC rather than the PNM,” he noted. Manning however believed that the shifts in the boundaries were done in a fairly equitable fashion. He pointed that this same Princes Town South/Tableland seat, for instance, would only be won by (the UNC) 188 votes on the basis of 2002 results, he noted. Manning also stated that the number of marginal seats had increased significantly. Under the new arrangement, the constituencies of Cumuto/Manza-nilla; Pointe-a-Pierre; Chaguanas East;  Princes Town South/Tableland would be defined as marginal, in addition to the current marginal seats of  St Joseph; San Fernando West; Tunapuna, San Juan/Barataria and Mayaro.

Manning said this meant that MPs had to work harder and provide better representation. “All power to the people,” he quipped. Manning said the preliminary glance showed three of the seats would now have a margin of victory of less than 1,000 votes; four seats a margin of just under 1,600, and two seats a margin of just under 2,500. Manning added that it also appeared that the EBC had taken into consideration not just geography but sociology. “It appears... that a greater attempt has been made to keep communities together,” he said. Complimenting the EBC for the job done, he said that the PNM had no reservations  about the report at this time. Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday said he got the impression from reading the EBC Report that the Commissioners were “crying out for constitutional reform.” “They are trying to divide up the country into constituencies, trying to balance off one with the other, and all those old criteria are no longer relevant,” he said. Panday used the opportunity to make his standard call for the introduction of proportional representation.

“I thought the answer would be solved quite easily with proportional representation because it wouldn’t matter where people lived. Their vote would count,” he said. He added that he did not see the need to continue under the present system. He suggested that there should now be a 100-seat unicameral legislature, abolishing the appointed  element (the Senate). The EBC, in explaining the rationale for its increase, stated that there were no calls from the MPs or the public suggesting that constituencies were too large and difficult to serve.

It stated, however, that it felt that the “countervailing argument of growing political maturity of the population, evidenced by the increasing demands made on the State, the increasing diversity and complexity of the responsibilities of parliamentary representatives, and the likelihood that an improved quality of representation would result from the reduction in the size of the electorate in an electoral district was sufficent to justify the consideration of an increase in the number of constituencies.” The Commission added that it considered various averages per size of constituency, which included data from several democracies in the Commonwealth, and finally decided to reduce the average size per constituency by 15 percent.