On Au­gust 31, 1962, Trinidad and To­ba­go at­tained in­de­pen­dent sta­tus and this year the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic has cel­e­brat­ed 49 years as an in­de­pen­dent coun­try. It should be not­ed, how­ev­er, that be­fore the coun­try ac­quired in­de­pen­dence, a num­ber of ex­per­i­ments were tried. This ar­ti­cle ac­cord­ing­ly ex­am­ines the var­i­ous mod­els that were pro­posed. Much of the da­ta is tak­en from my book, Re­vis­it­ing Colo­nial Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Gov­ern­ment: A Read­er (School of Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies 2009).

One of the ear­li­er mod­els or arrange­ments of ad­min­is­tra­tion was the Old Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sys­tem of Gov­ern­ment. This con­sist­ed gen­er­al­ly of three ma­jor or­gans, name­ly the Gov­er­nor, the Coun­cil and the As­sem­bly. The Gov­er­nor di­rect­ly rep­re­sent­ed the Crown or the pro­pri­etor. By virtue of his Com­mis­sion and the Let­ters Patent con­sti­tut­ing his of­fice, he was 'en­ti­tled' to obe­di­ence, aid and as­sis­tance of all mil­i­tary and civ­il of­fi­cers. The pow­ers of the Gov­er­nor were ex­ten­sive and in­clud­ed the fol­low­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties:

• He could con­vene, pro­rogue or dis­solve the leg­is­la­ture;

• He could ve­to any law;

• He had the com­mand of the mili­tia;

• He could ap­point of­fi­cials such as judges and jus­tices of the peace;

• He had in­dus­tri­al, com­mer­cial and ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal as well as po­lit­i­cal du­ties;

• He had the pow­er in the name of the Crown of is­su­ing writs for the elec­tion of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive As­sem­blies and Coun­cils and of con­vok­ing, pro­rogu­ing and dis­solv­ing leg­isla­tive bod­ies;

• He had the pow­er to ap­point, sus­pend and dis­miss pub­lic ser­vants in the Colony;

• He was em­pow­ered to ad­min­is­ter the ap­point­ed oaths to all per­sons in of­fice.

In oth­er words, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Gov­er­nor were all en­com­pass­ing and he served not on­ly as the head of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil but un­der the Crown Colony Sys­tem of Gov­ern­ment, presided over the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil as well. An­oth­er 'arm' or 'or­gan' un­der the Old Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sys­tem of Gov­ern­ment was the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil whose main re­spon­si­bil­i­ties were to of­fer ad­vice to the Gov­er­nor. The Gov­er­nor, too, was re­quired to con­sult the Coun­cil in all mat­ters of im­por­tance, ex­cept in a mat­ter of emer­gency.

Mem­bers of the Coun­cil could on­ly be dis­missed by the Crown. How­ev­er, this Coun­cil did not act as a "check and bal­ance" on the Gov­er­nor, rather this was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the third 'arm' of the As­sem­bly which was nom­i­nat­ed by the Crown. By 1834, how­ev­er, it was found that a new mod­el of ad­min­is­tra­tion was nec­es­sary since the old sys­tem had a num­ber of dead­locks and by 1875, most of the colonies, with the ex­cep­tion of Bar­ba­dos, adopt­ed a pure Crown Colony Sys­tem of Gov­ern­ment.

The Crown Colony Sys­tem of Gov­ern­ment

Un­der this type of ad­min­is­tra­tion the colonies were ad­min­is­tered by a Leg­is­la­ture com­posed of the fol­low­ing:

• An of­fi­cial ma­jor­i­ty con­trolled by the Gov­er­nor , re­spon­si­ble to the Sec­re­tary of State;

• An un­of­fi­cial el­e­ment nom­i­nat­ed by the Gov­er­nor.

Es­sen­tial­ly, though, the pure sys­tem of Crown Colony of­fered what lat­er be­came known as a bi­cam­er­al sys­tem of gov­ern­ment and set the pat­tern for the in­tro­duc­tion of the West­min­ster White­hall two cham­ber sys­tem of Gov­ern­ment.

The uni­fi­ca­tion ex­per­i­ment

As ear­ly as 1895, the idea of uni­fi­ca­tion of the civ­il ser­vice was con­sid­ered by Joseph Cham­ber­lain. The pro­claimed aim of uni­fi­ca­tion was the main­te­nance and im­prove­ment of the ef­fi­cien­cy of the colo­nial ser­vice by en­abling staff of high per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be re­cruit­ed.

The prin­ci­ple of the uni­fi­ca­tion arrange­ment was ac­cept­ed in 1930 by Lord Pass­field and on Ju­ly 1, 1932, the Uni­fied Colo­nial Ad­min­is­tra­tion Ser­vice was in­au­gu­rat­ed.

The Fed­er­al ques­tion

The out­break of the war in Sep­tem­ber 1939, and the fail­ure to find com­mon grounds with which to pro­ceed put an end to not on­ly Uni­fi­ca­tion but al­so the idea of self gov­ern­ment which had been ger­mi­nat­ing for a num­ber of years as can be gleaned from a num­ber of dis­patch­es at the time. How­ev­er, it should be re­called that it was the Moyne Com­mis­sion which pro­posed that the colonies were not ready for this arrange­ment. By 1945, the then Sec­re­tary of State de­cid­ed that the time had come to recog­nise the widen­ing of the hori­zons of the British Caribbean colonies by re­new­ing se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the fed­er­a­tion as the best means of achiev­ing the de­clared aim of British pol­i­cy. In a dis­patch dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 14, 1947, it was sug­gest­ed that a con­fer­ence be con­vened at Mon­tego Bay in Ja­maica in Sep­tem­ber 1947. It was sug­gest­ed that a num­ber of ser­vices could be cen­tralised.

How­ev­er, by 1950 this idea was aban­doned like all the rest and by 1960s, the Fed­er­al ex­per­i­ment was rel­e­gat­ed to the his­to­ry books. One would won­der, why the pre­am­ble about ex­per­i­ments and arrange­ments at this time? The an­swer is sim­ple. In all coun­tries, with all arrange­ments, what will be ob­served over time, is the rise and fall of sys­tems, of struc­tures and arrange­ments, of po­lit­i­cal par­ties, of regimes and of gov­ern­ments. No arrange­ment is sta­t­ic-no arrange­ment is per­ma­nent and giv­en the pres­sures for change such as tech­nol­o­gy, au­toma­tion, ex­pan­sion in pop­u­la­tion and pres­sures from the pop­u­la­tion for ameni­ties, it is to be ex­pect­ed that arrange­ments that once were con­sid­ered ef­fi­cient are now be­ing crit­i­cised.

A sim­i­lar oc­cur­rence is tak­ing place in the health sys­tems, in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, in the civ­il ser­vice as well as in the po­lice force. Old meth­ods and pro­ce­dures are now forced to give rise to new ex­per­i­ments-to new arrange­ments-to new method­olo­gies. It is to be ex­pect­ed that there will al­ways be those who are re­luc­tant to change, those who are afraid to change, those who re­sist re­form since the old sys­tems brought ben­e­fits but main­ly it is the un­cer­tain­ty of the pro­posed changes. Like every coun­try, Trinidad and To­ba­go is like a lab where new ex­per­i­ments and arrange­ments are be­ing in­tro­duced in or­der to im­prove (some sug­gest re­tard) the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try. As an aca­d­e­m­ic it will be use­ful to eval­u­ate this ex­per­i­ment some day.