Procedure and House Affairs committee  This is one area that we still have to look at, in terms of what is the best way for us to go forward. So far we have contracted an outside production team to produce the debate. Then we go to the media house, the television stations—because it's a televised event—and ask them

Procedure and House Affairs committee  More of the population has access to cable. The Internet as a means of viewing television is really something quite new in Trinidad and Tobago. Most people would be viewing our main cable stations. We don't have the vast number of stations that you have. We probably have only fou

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much. We wish you all the best in forming a debates commission that is best suited to your country.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, we didn't have anything like that. What you would find is that the chamber of commerce would invite the prospective leaders to come and address their members, and the members would ask them questions. In the context of a debate, no, we have not had that. We've had interviews

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think as far as possible, you should remain independent from any organization, because as I said, even though the chamber was extremely supportive, there were times when that worked against us, because people said the chamber is big business and big business is supporting this,

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We operate very much like that. During an election period we bring on extra staff and we would have a full office of all the different skills required and then after elections, we would go back to doing almost nothing. Again, one of the shortfalls for us is that we still relied o

Procedure and House Affairs committee  During the election period, the production people are always outsourced. That would be a group made up of probably 10 persons or so. We always bring in our marketing and communication people—again outsourced. That could be probably just two persons. Then we have the office staff

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No: one in 2010 and two in 2013.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Perhaps not, because something happened in the last debate that we planned in 2015, which did not go well for the commission. We have learned a lot of lessons along the way. Literally, as we go along, we are learning and improving. One of the things that is very important with th

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We are developing a detailed MOU, which would spell out the rights and responsibilities of both parties, the debates commission and the media, so we know going forward there's a really strict way, a modus operandi, between the two.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's one of the things we think that we could easily have debated prior to the elections, whether we should have a fixed term for governance and things like that, campaign financing. All things that are relevant to what the party would bring, but bring it all from before. It's

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I think you've probably hit the nail on the head: it's a little different with the culture and the Trinidadian people. Again, because the debates commission is not legislated in any way, you will have a particular politician say, “Yes, I support your debates commission and I

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Corporate T & T funds it totally. From the very first debate in 2010, even the debate that did not come off, corporate T & T funded us. The chamber would have been involved with in-kind funding—human resources and those sorts of things, facilities—but the actual cost of t

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Going forward, that is also a difficulty. We need to have funding that we can rely on, so not every debate you have to go to corporate T & T and literally put your hands out and beg. We are in the process of looking for international funding from some of these other instituti