DR HAMID GHANY

The res­ig­na­tion of Jack Warn­er as the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ch­agua­nas West has cre­at­ed the need for a by-elec­tion to be held in that con­stituen­cy as the va­can­cy has oc­curred with­in the first four years of the life of this Par­lia­ment.The crit­i­cal mark­ers to be fol­lowed start with sec­tion 49(2)(a) of the Con­sti­tu­tion which says:

"A mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives shall al­so va­cate his seat in the House where–(a) He re­signs it by writ­ing un­der his hand ad­dressed to the Speak­er or, where the of­fice of Speak­er is va­cant or the Speak­er is ab­sent from T&T, to the Deputy Speak­er."

Un­der these pro­vi­sions, Jack Warn­er was able to re­sign his seat as a mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. His res­ig­na­tion would have tak­en ef­fect from the mo­ment it was re­ceived by the Speak­er based on the pro­vi­sions of sec­tion 142(2) which read as fol­lows:

"The res­ig­na­tion of any per­son from any such of­fice shall take ef­fect when the writ­ing sig­ni­fy­ing the res­ig­na­tion is re­ceived by the per­son or au­thor­i­ty to whom it is ad­dressed or by any per­son au­tho­rised by that per­son or au­thor­i­ty to re­ceive it."

Once the let­ter was re­ceived by the Speak­er, the res­ig­na­tion be­came ef­fec­tive in ac­cor­dance with the con­di­tions laid out in the let­ter which spec­i­fied mid­night on that day as the time when it would come in­to ef­fect.The next ques­tion that aris­es is when will the va­can­cy be filled. Ac­cord­ing to sec­tion 69(3) of the Con­sti­tu­tion:

"Where a va­can­cy oc­curs in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives with­in the first four years of the life of the Par­lia­ment a by-elec­tion shall be held to fill such va­can­cy not lat­er than 90 days from the date of the an­nounce­ment by the Speak­er of the va­can­cy."

This par­tic­u­lar is­sue of the de­c­la­ra­tion of the va­can­cy by the Speak­er has be­come quite con­tentious as it has been sug­gest­ed in some quar­ters that the Speak­er can is­sue a press re­lease or call a press con­fer­ence to de­clare the va­can­cy, while in oth­er quar­ters it has been ar­gued that there is a set­tled prac­tice of the Speak­er's mak­ing the an­nounce­ment of the va­can­cy at a sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

The lev­el of anx­i­ety on this mat­ter rose con­sid­er­ably when the House was ad­journed to a date to be fixed two Fri­days ago. It has since been an­nounced that the House will sit on May 10 in­stant which will al­low the Speak­er the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­form the House of the va­can­cy.

From that date the clock will start run­ning as re­gards fix­ing the date for the by-elec­tion which will be de­ter­mined by the Prime Min­is­ter and would ob­vi­ous­ly fall some­where in be­tween a pe­ri­od of not less than 28 days and not more than 90 days from the date of de­c­la­ra­tion of the va­can­cy. The min­i­mum pe­ri­od is set by the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act and the max­i­mum pe­ri­od is set by the Con­sti­tu­tion.

The Con­sti­tu­tion clear­ly en­vis­ages that a dis­so­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment is like­ly with­in the fifth year of the par­lia­men­tary term and so no pro­vi­sion is made for the hold­ing of by-elec­tions dur­ing such a pe­ri­od as a gen­er­al elec­tion is deemed to be im­mi­nent.From this stand­point, it is ap­par­ent that the Con­sti­tu­tion is pre­pared to tol­er­ate a va­can­cy for a pe­ri­od of one year dur­ing the fifth year of any Par­lia­ment.

T&T has not had many by-elec­tions in its post-in­de­pen­dence his­to­ry. In Jan­u­ary 1968 there was a by-elec­tion in Ch­agua­nas ow­ing to the fact that the Speak­er de­clared the seat of the ab­sent Dr Rudranath Capildeo to be va­cant the month be­fore.Bhadase Sagan Maraj re­turned to Par­lia­ment hav­ing con­test­ed as an in­de­pen­dent MP ow­ing to the boy­cott of the by-elec­tion by the DLP.

In 1990 fol­low­ing the death of Leo Des Vi­gnes on Ju­ly 27, 1990 in the at­tempt­ed coup, there was a by-elec­tion in Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral that was won by Ken­neth Val­ley of the PNM.In 1994 there were three by-elec­tions name­ly (i) in Laven­tille West up­on the death of Mor­ris Mar­shall which was won by Eu­lalie James, (ii) in Ca­roni East up­on the death of Sham Mo­hammed which was won by In­dera Sage­wan, and (iii) in Pointe-a-Pierre up­on the death of PNM MP Cyril Ra­jaram which was won for the UNC by Gideon Hanoomans­ingh.

In 1997 there was a very con­tentious by-elec­tion in To­ba­go East up­on the res­ig­na­tion of ANR Robin­son to be­come the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic. The seat was won by the NAR can­di­date Dr Mor­gan Job (4,117) who de­feat­ed Hil­son Phillips of the PNM (1,184) and in­de­pen­dent can­di­date Dr Win­ford James (860).

The sig­nif­i­cance of this by-elec­tion is that it split the NAR af­ter Pamela Nichol­son and Deb­o­rah Moore-Mig­gins de­clared their sup­port for Win­ford James who had been re­fused as the NAR can­di­date, while Ho­choy Charles had sup­port­ed Mor­gan Job as the NAR can­di­date.That split marked the be­gin­ning of the end for the NAR in To­ba­go. It was the last time a by-elec­tion was held in this coun­try.