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Aug 08, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, has announced that her government will soon be tabling a constitutional amendment Bill. If it becomes reality, Trinidad and Tobago will certainly leave Guyana behind, and that is ironic. Ironic in that if there is any Caribbean country that should literally worship a constitution that puts enormous brakes on the unruly use of power, it is Guyana. But we don’t have such a document in this land.
Guyana has been a troubled polity long before it gained Independence, and since then, its troubles have multiplied with supersonic speed. Almost ninety-nine percent of our tragedies stem from unchecked power that the Executive possesses. After the 2011 elections, it was laid bare to every citizen that our constitution is the major stumbling block to democratic openings.
In the 2011 elections, total votes counted gave the opposition a majority in Parliament, only for Guyanese to find that the Executive assumes power that Parliament cannot check. The only way the Executive could be dealt with by the Parliament is by a no-confidence vote. And even that is fraught with nightmarish dimensions. If one analyzes Dr. Luncheon’s attitude last Wednesday on the no-confidence vote, there are subtle indications that the government isn’t going to accept a successful no-confidence vote just like that. There are subtle hints that it will be no easy acceptance.
The T&T Prime Minister has gone in far-reaching directions that will move her country away from untamed power. Apart from accepting two terms only for a Prime Minister, the new constitution will allow for a second election in the first-past-the-post system (the plurality model). Under this method, if three candidates in a constituency end up with 33, 33 and 34 votes respectively, the one with 34 gets the parliamentary seat.
This means, of course, that 66 voters didn’t favour him; more than half of the voters. What the T&T Prime Minister has tabled is a system where if there is no fifty-one percent vote for a candidate, there will be a run-off. PM Persad-Bissessar is also providing for a fixed election date and the recall of a parliamentarian by the constituency voters themselves.
These new horizons in Trinidad and Tobago make a Guyanese feel sad, because here in Guyana, we know there aren’t broad minds in politics that will embrace these changes of PM Persad-Bissessar. In fact, after the 1997 elections, Guyana missed priceless opportunities to write a deeply democratic constitution. One can point to perhaps the only courageous change after 1997 – presidential term limits.
Except for presidential term limits, we retained many of the Westminster foolishness in our constitution, because it synchronizes with the lust for power in this country. It is beyond imagination to think that a country’s leading politicians could have spent years working on constitutional changes and retained a clause that prevents parties from forming a coalition to acquire executive power. I haven’t done the research, but where in the world is that possible? Is Guyana an exception?
One egregious inheritance from the colonial power was the constitutional role of legal autonomy for certain state institutions. This is such a caricature that it borders on idiocy. Offices that are “legally independent” are the Police Commissioner, Vice Chancellor of UG, the Auditor-General, the Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority, the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. But ultimate control lies with the Executive President, because he appoints these office holders.
This caricatured anomaly should have been removed from the constitution by the reform commission set up to amend the constitution after 1997. The problem with this farce is that it was transported to the Third World by Britain, whose history and culture is vastly different from Third World countries.
Constitutional amendments should ensure that the legal autonomy is strengthened by an appointment process that does not reside solely in the hand of the Executive. In Canada and Sweden, the immigration board head is not appointed by the Executive and is insulated from the tentacles of the Executive.
Both Sweden and Canada are long-standing democracies yet their politicians were wise to see the value of legal autonomy for certain institutions. Yet in the Third World where naked power is instinctive, such constitutional independence is more urgent.
As the Trinidadian Prime Minister put it as she announced the constitutional amendments, “American presidents leave office with dignity and grace, Westminster Prime Ministers cling to power to the very end”.
What Guyana also needs is term limits for both politicians and organizational heads. Vincent Alexander during his challenge against Robert Corbin advocated term limits for heads of political parties. Guyana desperately needs such decency and commonsense.
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
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