Last week, Dr Linda Baboolal, former president of the Senate and former minister of government, passed away. She was elected president of the Senate during the period of the 18-18 tied Parliament when there was no speaker elected in the House of Representatives. This was a time of great constitutional vulnerability for Trinidad and Tobago as there was no speaker and deputy speaker and she held the position of President of the Senate at a time when President Robinson was facing a variety of health challenges that would lead her to act as President of the Republic on a number of occasions during the absence of the full constitutional repertoire of persons who could act as President of the Republic.
The full face of that challenge revealed itself on October 17, 2002, when Parliament was convened after the general election of October 7, 2002. President Robinson had been ailing for some time and Dr Baboolal was acting as president immediately before the opening of Parliament. The reality of that situation was that she was going to cease to be President of the Senate upon the reading of the proclamation by the Clerk of the Senate summoning the Senate to sit on that day. That proclamation had been signed by President Robinson on October 11, 2002.
Once that proclamation had been read, Dr Baboolal was no longer president of the Senate and was no longer able to act as President of the Republic. President Robinson had been summoned out of illness to perform state duty so that the process in the Senate that day could proceed.
She had been named as one of the senators appointed on the advice of Prime Minister Manning. That entitled her to sit with all other senators and she was re-elected President of the Senate. Her nomination was proposed by Senator Joan Yuille-Williams, Minister of Community Development and Gender Affairs, and seconded by independent Senator Dr Eastlyn Mc Kenzie. She was declared elected as President of the Senate.
The Hansard records the events after that as follows:
“Madam President: Hon Senators, this sitting is now suspended to allow you to go to the other place for the continuation of the ceremonial opening.
10.35 am: Sitting suspended” (Hansard, Senate, October 17, 2002, p 4).
After that, she was whisked away to President’s House where she was sworn into office as acting President of the Republic and she rode in state to Parliament as the acting President of the Republic where she addressed both Houses of Parliament in that capacity.
Her address included some pearls of wisdom that ended with a quote from Rabindranath Tagore as follows:
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free, where the world has not been broken up into fragments of narrow domestic walls, where words come out from the depths of truth, where tireless striving stretches the arms towards perfection, where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert of dead habit, where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action, into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.” (pp 5-6).
After that joint sitting, she left the chamber to continue her service as acting President of the Republic and the Hansard records that the Vice President of the Senate, Rawle Titus, had taken the chair. Her handling of this delicate constitutional situation may not have been appreciated by the wider public, however, the State was vulnerable between April 5, 2002 (when the 18-18 Parliament met) and October 17, 2002, when the new Parliament that assembled after the general election of October 7 met.
Acting as President during this period required her to demonstrate a high level of dignity and decorum which she brought to the office notwithstanding the fact that she had resigned as chairman of the PNM immediately prior to her being appointed a Senator in April 2002.
After assuming the acting presidency on October 17, she returned to the chair as President of the Senate on November 12, 2002.
The need to move from being partisan to being dignified as an acting President in such a short space of time must be regarded as a personal credit to her. She helped to keep the ship of state functioning notwithstanding its vulnerability for which she must be praised.