Trinidad and Tobago Review

Though this Edition contains much of the usual fare, it attempts to end that stage of the discussion on constitution reform which was promoted by the Conference of Nov 28 held by the T&T Inst. of the WI and associated groups. To be quite frank, both the statement at that Conference and the reporting of it should be cause for concern. More than anything, they exhibited the country's innocence of the issue and displayed our essential satisfaction with the colonial arrangements we've inherited and indeed entrenched.

The corollary is of course the almost complete absence of intellectual life and the political activity to which it is absolutely indispensable. And yet we're distressed without despairing. We realize that only genuine politics can bring an effective awakening to rights and responsibilities, to the ugliness of attendant choices and to the agony but necessity of continuing compromise. But no one knows for certain how genuine politics can ever be arranged. Many cop out by dismissing all politicians and politics.

Most of what we utter about constitution reform is just plain foolishness. That is not because we're stupid but because education and school keep us at a stage where we're incapable of translating feelings into thoughts or comprehension into lucid communication. Few of us know the meaning of such everyday words as politics, government, parliament, ethnicity, race. We seek every kind of scapegoat to explain our own inadequacy. We also focus on our own private hurts and our own pet remedies of restricted application. We seem not to know that changes of the part can be negated by changes in the whole.

Some concentrate on the Senate, others on the excessive power of the PM, on local govt or on PR. Most do not distinguish between electoral and government reform; or between re-constitution of economy and society and amendment to the Constitution as law. Few master the difference between the Westminster model as imaginary laws actually enacted and as mores and habits embedded in culture. Even University dons make the preposterous claim that we introduced it here in 1962. They do not see that it cannot be said to exist if the wishes of lawyers and govt leaders are daily violated in practice.

We've selected three pieces. The piece by Professor Spence is given exposure despite being a victim of utterly confused definitions and perceptions. His failure to seize certain ineluctable requisites such as PR and effective representation in the Central Govt releases his energies for all manner of trivia at the expense of any cogent view. A second piece by Kirk Meighoo confirms the presence of persons who have some overall conception of the requirement. I find the piece thoughtful and imaginative though over-determined and marred by its failure to differentiate clearly between his present offering and the proposal for House of Govt and House of Parliament originally advanced by me.

What Meighoo advocates is in important ways different in respect both to the Executive and the Legislature, to the ways of constituting those two Houses and to their modes of operation. He concludes with a rather puzzling notion of a two chamber parliament which is the “supreme body.” At any rate, we‘re faced with relevant choices that are complete and not simply based on personal, private or party agendas or bogged down with irrelevancies.

Mine is the third piece and contains four principal elements. The first is a Senate converted recognizably into a House of Parliament in the role of a standard Legislature. Its job would be to enact laws, pass motions including those it would itself have introduced, oversee all govt business including significant public sector appointments and generally instruct, inform and discipline the Executive. This House could be elected as now, on a constituency basis. Better still, it could be selected by suitably constituted and designated community interests. Either way, it would contain a dynamic for MPs to escape Executive domination.

The second element is a House of Government meant to retain in essence what we have now under the misnomer of the House of Representatives. We abstract the missing representative activity and locate it in the House of Parliament, formerly the Senate. As now, electors would effectively vote for the party leaders as alternative heads of govt and heads of State. As a matter of course a single list system of PR would figure. The novel aspects are twofold. In order of precedence, the list would identify candidates for places in the Cabinet and for headships in the Administration. Second, the House would give official exposure to the teams in competition to govern the country, something our democracy could certainly benefit from.

The third element is the overt concession the scheme would make to widespread popular demands for the election of the country's leaders, especially the Chief Executive, in a way that makes seats commensurate with votes. Finally, the whole scheme is achieved with maximum economy and maximum friendliness to the elector in terms both of close alignment of proposals to existing arrangements and of easy comprehension by the public. Moreover, where the social structure of party support is concerned, this scheme is meant to induce only minor mutation at the start lest expected disruptions aggravate the usual automatic and mindless bonding. It anticipates a slow but accelerating process by which the parties would attract their support on the basis of philosophy, policy, plans and programmes.