Der­ren Joseph

The sec­ond of 51 planned meet­ings in the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form con­sul­ta­tion process took place in Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day, No­vem­ber 7. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I could not make it, but I did record the live broad­cast on NCC Chan­nel 4. Ku­dos to the Gov­ern­ment for broad­cast­ing this his­tor­i­cal se­ries of pub­lic meet­ings. One im­por­tant is­sue raised was that of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion (PR). The Web site of the World Pol­i­cy In­sti­tute– HY­PER­LINK "http://www.world­pol­i­cy.org" www.world­pol­i­cy.org–ex­plains that un­der PR, rep­re­sen­ta­tives are elect­ed from mul­ti-seat dis­tricts in pro­por­tion to the num­ber of votes re­ceived.

PR as­sures that po­lit­i­cal par­ties or can­di­dates will have the per­cent­age of leg­isla­tive seats that re­flects their pub­lic sup­port. A par­ty or can­di­date need not come in first to win seats. So in our con­text, a par­ty such as the COP would have se­cured some pres­ence in our Par­lia­ment. Among the ar­gu­ments in favour of PR is that it leads to greater vot­er turnout, and it should lead to greater in­clu­sion of women and mi­nori­ties. As with many such ideas, how­ev­er, the de­tails are very im­por­tant. There ap­pears to be many vari­a­tions of PR. Pri­mar­i­ly, there are the list sys­tem and the sin­gle trans­fer­able vote (STV) sys­tem. But there are hy­brids of this PR sys­tem in place in Aus­tralia, Bo­livia, In­dia, Mex­i­co and so on.

I would be in­ter­est­ed in un­der­stand­ing ex­act­ly which vari­a­tion of PR is be­ing pro­posed. The present gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, is clear in its op­po­si­tion to it. Its ar­gu­ments re­flect some of those made on a Web­site called "Why Not Pro­por­tion­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tion" at

HY­PER­LINK "http://www.pro­por­tion­al-rep­re­sen­ta­tion.org/" http://www.pro­por­tion­al-rep­re­sen­ta­tion.org/. The PNM's se­ries of meet­ings is avail­able on-line and in the San­gre Grande and Diego Mar­tin meet­ings in par­tic­u­lar, there was dis­cus­sion of the PR is­sue.

The first crit­i­cism is that PR leads to weak coali­tion gov­ern­ments. The ex­am­ple giv­en was the NAR in 1986, which by 1988, had frac­tured.

The sec­ond and more fre­quent­ly-heard crit­i­cism is that PR could ex­ac­er­bate eth­nic ten­sions. In his speech­es, the Prime Min­is­ter re­ferred to a min­is­ter from the Gov­ern­ment of Sri Lan­ka who had al­so been a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor. This min­is­ter was re­spon­si­ble for con­sti­tu­tion­al af­fairs in Sri Lan­ka as they con­sid­ered a new con­sti­tu­tion. This min­is­ter is pur­port­ed to say that "if your prob­lem is ge­og­ra­phy, pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion might help you. But if your prob­lem is race, don't touch it. "Don't touch it! It will ac­cen­tu­ate the racial prob­lem and the last state will be worse than the first."

Our Prime Min­is­ter went on to say that "the minute you go by a sys­tem of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the ten­den­cy of politi­cians to cam­paign on the ba­sis of race is too strong for our politi­cians to re­sist. "That is what is go­ing to hap­pen. You are go­ing to have the coun­try be­ing po­larised on the ba­sis of race." Nat­u­ral­ly, we in Trinidad and To­ba­go should ex­am­ine the sit­u­a­tion in near­by Guyana, a coun­try with PR and one that is sim­i­lar to us, both so­cio-cul­tur­al­ly and his­tor­i­cal­ly. There is an ar­ti­cle in the Stabroek News, Ju­ly 23rd, 2009, called "In­clu­sive Gov­er­nance in Guyana" writ­ten by Bertie Ram­cha­ran.

Dr Bertrand Ram­cha­ran has a PhD from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, is a bar­ris­ter-at-law, a for­mer UN High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights, Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guyana, Com­mis­sion­er of the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mis­sion of Ju­rists and Pro­fes­sor at Gene­va Grad­u­ate In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies. Dr Ram­cha­ran is al­so one of the founders of the new­ly-es­tab­lished Guyana In­sti­tute of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, of which he is a di­rec­tor. Dr Ram­cha­ran's ar­ti­cle is quite in­struc­tive. In sum­ma­ry, he notes that the "con­stituen­cy sys­tem has bro­ken down," but that "pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion should be re­tained, as it would be too di­vi­sive to change it now."

He gives the im­pres­sion that Guyana may be stuck with a sys­tem that they may not nec­es­sar­i­ly en­joy. Af­ter draw­ing com­par­isons to the for­mer Yu­goslavia, Dr Ram­cha­ran goes on to rec­om­mend a ro­tat­ing pres­i­den­cy among the three ma­jor eth­nic groups. I would be in­ter­est­ed in hear­ing some­one analyse Guyana's ex­pe­ri­ence with PR and its lessons for us in T&T. Does PR work best in a rel­a­tive­ly ho­mo­ge­neous racial mix, like in Aus­tralia, parts of the EU and Cana­da?

Could PR be used for the up­per (or "oth­er") house that vets leg­is­la­tion com­ing from the low­er house with­out any ve­to pow­ers, like the House of Lords in the UK and the Ra­jya Sah­ba in In­dia?

Would it work in our Sen­ate? Or should small­er groups find rep­re­sen­ta­tion through re­formed lo­cal gov­ern­ment? Let us con­tin­ue to have the au­dac­i­ty of hope in our coun­try, as we move to­wards Vi­sion 2020.