Col­in Robin­son

I can't help but ad­mire an­i­mal wel­fare ac­tivist Jow­elle De Souza, who re­ceived more at­ten­tion than any oth­er na­tion­al awardee last week­end. In March 1997, spe­cial re­serve po­lice of­fi­cer Er­ic George ar­rest­ed her for shov­ing a man who was ha­rass­ing­ly fol­low­ing and pho­tograph­ing her in San Fer­nan­do–the same pruri­ent in­ter­est our me­dia showed in her last week­end–then he had her strip-searched.

De Souza sued, rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Lynette Ma­haraj (in­ci­den­tal­ly the wife of the at­tor­ney gen­er­al at that time), won, and made his­to­ry. Last Sun­day, De Souza re­ceived a na­tion­al award, the bronze Hum­ming­bird Medal.

An­oth­er rea­son to ad­mire De Souza is the way she par­layed sen­sa­tion­al­ism over her gen­der when the award was an­nounced in­to an ad­vance an­nounce­ment of a like­ly run for the San Fer­nan­do West par­lia­men­tary seat–per­haps the most mar­gin­al of mar­gin­als.Al­ready, she's made it a his­toric race. And al­ready I'm sign­ing up to vol­un­teer.\

Of course it's his­toric, be­cause, ac­cord­ing to some taste­less head­lines, she's "sex-change Jow­elle" and her can­di­da­cy will be a test of whether LGBTI peo­ple will be al­lowed the right to po­lit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion like every­one else.

But it's his­toric be­cause–pro­vid­ed they sur­vive le­gal chal­lenges al­ready ini­ti­at­ed, re­lent­less cit­i­zen protests, and ap­peals to Pres­i­dent Car­mona to with­hold as­sent–it will help us gauge the im­pact on pop­u­lar in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates of the con­vo­lut­ed runoff/tri­an­gu­laire pro­vi­sions thrust in­to the Con­sti­tu­tion in lan­guage hasti­ly draft­ed late at night.

De Souza is per­haps the kind of rep­re­sen­ta­tive the Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form com­mis­sion­ers had in mind when they agreed, af­ter the con­sul­ta­tion process, to sup­port runoffs.What's be­come com­plete­ly lost in the haste and scream­ing on all sides is that the runoff pro­vi­sion was nev­er in­tend­ed to be used in the se­lec­tion of a gov­ern­ment. We are pre­ma­ture­ly and un­nec­es­sar­i­ly amend­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion in ways we'll have to un­do when we im­ple­ment ad­di­tion­al el­e­ments of the re­form pack­age.

The Com­mis­sion pro­posed gov­ern­ment should be elect­ed by pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, with seats in a new sen­ate al­lo­cat­ed to par­ties in pro­por­tion to votes won na­tion­al­ly, with the par­ty/par­ties com­mand­ing a ma­jor­i­ty of the votes form­ing the gov­ern­ment.

Sen­a­tors would be se­lect­ed by go­ing down a list put for­ward by par­ties in ad­vance of the elec­tion. The po­lit­i­cal leader would be at the top and be­come prime min­is­ter if the par­ty won a ma­jor­i­ty, and all min­is­ters would be se­lect­ed from oth­er sen­a­tors.

MPs would be elect­ed to the House in a si­mul­ta­ne­ous but sep­a­rate bal­lot, and would nei­ther de­ter­mine the gov­ern­ment nor serve as min­is­ters, but in­stead be elect­ed first-past-the-post to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent con­stituen­cies' in­ter­ests in a leg­isla­tive body that pro­vid­ed checks and bal­ances on the gov­ern­ment and sen­a­tors in the Up­per House.

Judg­ment of some MPs' fit­ness for re­call would not be af­fect­ed by ne­glect of con­stituen­cies due to min­is­te­r­i­al du­ties; and to strength­en their rep­re­sen­ta­tion of con­stituen­cies, the com­mis­sion added a mi­nor fea­ture–runoff elec­tions–to the re­form pro­pos­als af­ter the con­sul­ta­tions, to en­sure rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­ceived the votes of a ma­jor­i­ty of those vot­ing in each con­stituen­cy. There would be no de­lay con­sti­tut­ing a new gov­ern­ment for runoffs to be com­plet­ed; they would have no role in de­cid­ing that.

The new House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives would en­cour­age small-par­ty and in­de­pen­dent can­di­da­cies, since vot­ing for par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tion would be sep­a­rate from vot­ing for na­tion­al gov­ern­ment.In 2010, for ex­am­ple, vot­ers in Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral could de­cide they loved Amery Browne's rep­re­sen­ta­tion but vote sep­a­rate­ly to get rid of Patrick Man­ning; those in St Ann's East could put Ver­na St Rose-Greaves in the House, but keep the Part­ner­ship out of pow­er.

But what was brought to Par­lia­ment in­stead were amend­ments to the Con­sti­tu­tion that al­low runoff elec­tion mea­sures to de­cide the gov­ern­ment.

What I ad­mire about De Souza as well is that she's not a "gay ac­tivist," as head­lines in this pa­per mis­rep­re­sent­ed. The work she has done to change so­cial at­ti­tudes to­ward sex­u­al and gen­der di­ver­si­ty has been by liv­ing her life and en­gag­ing in na­tion-build­ing in oth­er ways: as a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­woman, a cham­pi­on of an­i­mals, and an out­spo­ken crit­ic of gov­er­nance.

I'm told her award was pro­posed by the Gov­ern­ment, which is a re­fresh­ing sign late in the Part­ner­ship's tenure both of LGBTI in­clu­sion and of its abil­i­ty to recog­nise de­serv­ing crit­ics. That and the ap­point­ment of Lynette See­baran Suite to steer the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion is re­al­ly good news. Let's hope re­al pol­i­cy comes next.

One can on­ly hope, too, that the re­turn of Gillian Lucky, an­oth­er amaz­ing pa­tri­ot, to the bench is a path to even high­er of­fice. She and her team al­lowed the na­tion to imag­ine the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty could func­tion, and made it a safe place for LGBTI cit­i­zens to re­port po­lice abuse. I hope her suc­ces­sor can do the same.

Un­like my fel­low colum­nist Clarence, though, no par­ty has yet tak­en me up on the in­ter­est I ex­pressed a month ago in work­ing to strength­en the poli­cies of the next gov­ern­ment. So maybe my toil will be to help elect smart, dar­ing can­di­dates like De Souza.