Two Fri­days ago in Bar­ba­dos, BLP back­bencher Ralph Thorne, KC, crossed the floor by in­di­cat­ing to Pres­i­dent Dame San­dra Ma­son that he no longer sup­port­ed the Gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley.

As a con­se­quence, he in­di­cat­ed to Pres­i­dent Ma­son that he was will­ing to as­sume the of­fice of Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. Last Mon­day, he was sworn in­to of­fice as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. Our Leader of the Op­po­si­tion is sim­ply ap­point­ed and does not have to swear an oath up­on as­sum­ing that of­fice.

The next day Thorne at­tend­ed the sit­ting of the House of As­sem­bly in his new ca­pac­i­ty. The Bar­ba­dos Par­lia­ment’s YouTube chan­nel showed im­ages of Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley walk­ing across the aisle to wel­come Thorne in his new ca­pac­i­ty af­ter she had been quot­ed in the week­end’s pa­pers that she had no idea that Thorne was plan­ning to make such a move.

She de­scribed the move as “easy come, easy go”.

In giv­ing rea­sons for his de­ci­sion to cross the floor, Thorne said that it came down to him choos­ing be­tween “prin­ci­pled ob­jec­tion” and “blind par­ty obe­di­ence”. If this sit­u­a­tion had arisen here, our Con­sti­tu­tion has pro­vi­sions for MPs to lose their seats if they re­sign from, or are ex­pelled by, the par­ty on whose tick­et they won their seat. That was in­tro­duced by Act No 15 of 1978 just af­ter Hec­tor Mc Clean had re­signed as Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port in the Er­ic Williams Cab­i­net on March 31, 1978, and de­clared him­self an in­de­pen­dent.

He al­so re­nounced the signed and un­dat­ed let­ter of res­ig­na­tion as an MP that all PNM can­di­dates were re­quired to give to Williams as a con­di­tion of them be­ing nom­i­nat­ed by the PNM as can­di­dates in the 1976 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Both Er­ic Williams and Bas­deo Pan­day had a joint in­ter­est in ad­vanc­ing such a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment as Williams had a fear of the ef­fect of Mc Clean’s re­nun­ci­a­tion of the signed and un­dat­ed let­ter and Pan­day re­gained the po­si­tion of Leader of the Op­po­si­tion af­ter Raf­fique Shah re­signed as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on the same day (March 31, 1978) be­cause of op­po­si­tion MPs switch­ing al­le­giances. The ear­li­er in­vo­ca­tion of these pro­vi­sions failed (1995-Hulsie Bhag­gan) and (1997-Vin­cent Lasse and Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith). How­ev­er, in Sep­tem­ber 2013 when Her­bert Vol­ney was re­moved as the MP for St Joseph fol­low­ing his res­ig­na­tion from the UNC to join the ILP, a by-elec­tion was sub­se­quent­ly held.

The new Leader of the Op­po­si­tion in Bar­ba­dos moved swift­ly to ap­point the two Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors for which pro­vi­sion is made in the Con­sti­tu­tion. Fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 2022 gen­er­al elec­tion, there was no Leader of the Op­po­si­tion be­cause the BLP had won all 30 seats in the House of As­sem­bly.

The post was va­cant. How­ev­er, the Bar­ba­dos Con­sti­tu­tion makes the fol­low­ing pro­vi­sions in sec­tion 75:

“75. Dur­ing any pe­ri­od in which there is a va­can­cy in the of­fice of Leader of the Op­po­si­tion by rea­son of the fact that no per­son is both qual­i­fied in ac­cor­dance with this Con­sti­tu­tion for and will­ing to ac­cept, ap­point­ment to that of­fice, the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al shall­—

(a) act in his dis­cre­tion in the ex­er­cise of any func­tion in re­spect of which it is pro­vid­ed in this Con­sti­tu­tion that the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al shall act in ac­cor­dance with the ad­vice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion; and

(b) act on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter in the ex­er­cise of any func­tion in re­spect of which it is pro­vid­ed in this Con­sti­tu­tion that the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al shall act on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.”

As a con­se­quence of these pro­vi­sions, af­ter Jan­u­ary 2022 the Pres­i­dent (who had re­placed the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al) ap­point­ed two Sen­a­tors in April 2022 to fill the sen­a­to­r­i­al va­can­cies caused by hav­ing no Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. The Pres­i­dent re­voked those ap­point­ments (Dr Kristi­na Hinds and Dr Chel­ston Brath­waite) and re­placed them with Tri­cia Wat­son and Ryan Wal­ters on the ad­vice of the new Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.

This coun­try has had two oc­ca­sions when there was no ap­point­ed Leader of the Op­po­si­tion (May 1971-Ju­ly 1972 and De­cem­ber 2001-Au­gust 2002). Our Con­sti­tu­tion does not have sim­i­lar pro­vi­sions so there were no op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors dur­ing those pe­ri­ods.

Fur­ther­more, our elect­ed MPs have op­er­at­ed un­der the sword of Damo­cles since 1978 if they dare to al­ter their par­ty al­le­giance dur­ing their tenure. Not so in Bar­ba­dos.

Prof Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.