Constitutional reform again

TREVOR SUDAMA

THERE ARE a number of issues regarding the current excursion into constitutional reform cogitation.

The social, economic, and political environment with its plethora of urgent challenges and crises may not be conducive to the discussion of the subject as a foremost priority. The general indifference of the public to constitutional reform has been an issue of historical import.

The chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Constitutional Reform, Barendra Sinanan, acknowledges the problem.

He states: “The public really does not pay attention to what is in the Constitution,” therefore “we have to energise the public.” It is difficult to envisage Sinanan or members of the committee being able to energize an apathetic public.

As an example of this apathy, I myself, between July 2010 and April 2019, have had published in the press 28 columns/letters on various elements of constitutional reform, 14 of them in 2014 alone. Many others also wrote on the subject. There was no impact on the level of public interest or consciousness.

Then there is the composition of the committee, which may not generate the required level of enthusiasm for participation and incisive discussion. This is not to impugn the qualifications, commitment, integrity, and resolve of its members. It is merely to record certain perceptions regarding a deficiency in the amplitude of competencies, knowledge, experience, and perspectives for a more comprehensive examination.

Three members have some knowledge of the workings of the House of Representatives and another of the Senate. That is half of the membership of the committee. There is one former deputy Central Bank governor, one accountant, one former permanent secretary, and one Tobago representative.

There is no expert with extensive knowledge of constitutional matters, no captain of business and industry, no representative of workers’ institutions, no one with experience of the critical processes of the executive or judiciary or the intricacies of public finance, no prominent civil society representative, and no one with local government expertise to assess matters of the devolution of power.

Then some people are of the perception that the majority of members have PNM sympathies and thus the major recommendations may merely reflect the general tenor of PNM thinking on the matter.

Commissions or committees on constitutional reform have not in the past been established in response to any vigorous agitation from the general citizenry. The most elaborate and extensive exercise on this subject was conducted during 1972-1974 by a commission chaired by Sir Hugh Wooding. It was not as a result of public demands but in response to the results of a no-vote campaign announced unilaterally in 1971 by the then prospective leader of the DLP, ANR Robinson.

The embarrassment experienced by the PNM and its leader Dr. Williams of having won all the seats in the House of Representatives in the general election of that year provided the motivation for the establishment of this commission.

The major recommendations of the commission were summarily dismissed by the then PNM government. Since then, there were a few constitutional reform commissions/committees appointed. Some made modest proposals, many of which were not acted upon. Others did not complete their mandate. One may cynically conclude that such reform exercises initiated by the governing party were a form of political catharsis with no intended meaningful outcome.

In the present case, the constitutional reform committee was appointed pursuant to the request of a few people to honor the wish (or obsession) of former prime minister Basdeo Panday in memory of his passing. One may, therefore, speculate if Panday had not died in January and was still alive, whether the PNM administration would have bestirred itself to initiate discussions on constitutional reform.

It should be noted that during his tenure as opposition leader, Panday did not clamor for constitutional reform, except to support Dr. Williams in the passing of the Crossing of the Floor Act. Nor did he take steps as prime minister to identify and bring for parliamentary discussion and approval any major reforms, whether or not he surmised that they would not be supported by the PNM. It was only after he was no longer a Member of Parliament that his mantra of constitutional reform became a constant refrain.

One of the perennial problems associated with giving effect to constitutional reform proposals is that there will be vigorous opposition from any individual or institution in the current dispensation whose power, privilege, and status will be negatively affected or challenged. The classic case was the violent opposition by Williams to the major recommendation of the Wooding Commission that half of the members of the House of Representatives be elected by a system of proportional representation.

Williams spent two days in the House denouncing the proposition as a dagger aimed at the heart of the PNM and, consequently, his continued retention of power. The integrity of the commission was also attacked. The reason for the opposition was transparent. The existing first-past-the-post constituency system permitted the manipulation of constituency boundaries to facilitate the winning of seats and thus control of the government. Under proportional representation, there will be no constituency boundaries. The whole country will be one single constituency.

Any reference to the gerrymandering of constituencies will quickly draw forth the accusation that it is an attack on the integrity and professionalism of the members of an independent institution – the Elections and Boundaries Commission. However, there has been a long-standing perception that constituency boundaries were drawn up to favor the PNM.

In discussing the 1961 general election, Prof Selwyn Ryan, hardly to be regarded as a sympathizer of the opposition, had this to say: “There is no doubt whatsoever in the writer’s mind that the constituencies were gerrymandered” (Race and Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago, p 245). Forty-six years later, for the general election in 2007, the boundaries of the St Joseph constituency were changed, which facilitated victories for the PNM thereafter.

In other words, proportional representation as a reform to change the modality of citizen representation in the legislature is likely to be a non-starter.

My view is that there will be no constitutional reform which significantly alters the distribution of power under the current status quo.