DR HAMID GHANY

The open­ing of the sec­ond ses­sion of the tenth Par­lia­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go on Mon­day, June 27, 2011, had the usu­al pres­i­den­tial ad­dress to the Par­lia­ment be­ing de­liv­ered by His Ex­cel­len­cy Prof George Maxwell Richards, pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic. This ad­dress used to be known as the throne speech when Trinidad and To­ba­go was a monar­chy be­tween 1962 and 1976 and it was tra­di­tion­al­ly de­liv­ered by the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of each ses­sion of Par­lia­ment dur­ing the five-year life­time of each Par­lia­ment. The lan­guage it­self harks back to an era when Trinidad and To­ba­go was a monar­chy with Queen Eliz­a­beth II as its Queen and a Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al who was Her Majesty's per­son­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive. The Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al ex­er­cised the pow­ers of the Crown on be­half of Her Majesty in ac­cor­dance with the ad­vice of lo­cal min­is­ters. How­ev­er, af­ter 1972 and un­til Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came a re­pub­lic in 1976, cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ings were no longer used by the Gov­ern­ment as a means of start­ing a new ses­sion and there was no longer any de­bate on the throne speech and, there­fore, there was no vote tak­en on the speech to de­ter­mine whether or not the Gov­ern­ment had the sup­port of a ma­jor­i­ty of MPs for its pro­posed leg­isla­tive pro­gramme.

The last time that there was any sem­blance of the tra­di­tion­al throne speech was on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1976, (which was pro­claimed Re­pub­lic Day) at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the first ses­sion of the first Par­lia­ment of the Re­pub­lic when the first Pres­i­dent (El­lis Clarke) read the equiv­a­lent of a throne speech. There was a de­bate on this pres­i­den­tial ad­dress and it was sup­port­ed by a ma­jor­i­ty of the MPs when the vote was tak­en on it. That speech was clear­ly writ­ten by the then prime min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, in the mould of the throne speech­es of yes­ter­year. There were no more cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ings of Par­lia­ment dur­ing this first Par­lia­ment and it was not un­til the open­ing of the sec­ond Par­lia­ment in No­vem­ber 1981, that there was an­oth­er pres­i­den­tial ad­dress. How­ev­er, since that time, all pres­i­dents have brought greet­ings to MPs at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ings of Par­lia­ment. There is no longer any ver­bal ex­pres­sion of the leg­isla­tive agen­da of the Gov­ern­ment and there is now an adop­tion of the ad­dress as a House pa­per.

By ter­mi­nat­ing this tra­di­tion of hav­ing a speech writ­ten by the Prime Min­is­ter which is read by the Head of State, and sub­se­quent­ly de­bat­ed by par­lia­men­tar­i­ans on which there is a vote, the Par­lia­ment has lost a very pow­er­ful po­lit­i­cal tool which en­sures ac­count­abil­i­ty and mea­sure­ment of per­for­mance of every gov­ern­ment on an an­nu­al ba­sis. In the Unit­ed King­dom, the throne speech is sup­port­ed by the con­cept of the in­cum­ben­cy the­o­ry where­by every Prime Min­is­ter is en­ti­tled to meet the next Par­lia­ment, re­gard­less of the out­come of a gen­er­al elec­tion, and he/she will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty at that stage to con­firm whether his/her gov­ern­ment has the sup­port of a ma­jor­i­ty. The in­cum­ben­cy the­o­ry is sup­port­ed by the con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ar Rod­ney Bra­zier in the fol­low­ing way: "A Prime Min­is­ter who had failed to ob­tain a ma­jor­i­ty at a gen­er­al elec­tion would be fol­low­ing prece­dents if he were to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly (Bald­win 1929), or if he were to stay to see if he could form a coali­tion (Heath 1974), or if he were to wait and meet Par­lia­ment (Bald­win 1923-24). He is in the­o­ry en­ti­tled to re­main in of­fice un­til de­feat­ed on a vote of con­fi­dence." (Rod­ney Bra­zier, Con­sti­tu­tion­al Prac­tice, Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, Third Edi­tion, 1999, P 39).

In May 2010, Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown opt­ed to stay in of­fice for a few days to see whether the Con­ser­v­a­tives and the Lib­er­al De­moc­rats could form a coali­tion be­fore re­sign­ing af­ter he re­alised that they had agreed to a coali­tion. A coali­tion gov­ern­ment con­sist­ing of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty and the Lib­er­al-De­moc­rats was formed. The en­su­ing throne speech read by the Queen at the open­ing of Par­lia­ment would have in­clud­ed is­sues agreed by both par­ties so that the coali­tion in­ter­ests would have been rep­re­sent­ed in the speech and then sup­port­ed by its par­lia­men­tar­i­ans. Since be­com­ing a re­pub­lic, a new trend of thought has emerged with­in our pres­i­den­cy where­by there is no longer a prime min­is­te­r­i­al speech which is read by the Pres­i­dent and then de­bat­ed and ei­ther con­firmed or re­ject­ed by a par­lia­men­tary vote. The Pres­i­dent now brings greet­ings and may even ad­mon­ish par­lia­men­tar­i­ans on their weak­ness­es. The throne speech has evolved in Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to some­thing akin to a State of the Union ad­dress by the Pres­i­dent at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of Par­lia­ment. This hy­brid that has been cre­at­ed does not re­quire the Gov­ern­ment to earn the con­fi­dence of a ma­jor­i­ty of the House for it to pur­sue its leg­isla­tive agen­da. The de­mands of coali­tion gov­ern­ment re­quire that a for­mu­la be found for the ex­pres­sion of the leg­isla­tive in­tent of the gov­ern­ment, while the evo­lu­tion of the pres­i­den­cy has cre­at­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for our Pres­i­dent to de­liv­er a State of the Union ad­dress.