Ann Marie Bisses­sar

There have been ru­mours, whis­pers and sug­ges­tions that once more the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is about to em­bark on re­form of the Con­sti­tu­tion. I am amused. Who will be ap­point­ed to this com­mis­sion and at what cost to the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go? Will it be the anoint­ed ones-the peo­ple whose com­pe­tence know no lim­it, who seem to ap­pear on every board and com­mit­tee and who em­brace the In­ter­net in or­der to man­u­fac­ture a re­port which will be placed on the shelves? Or will it be the loy­al­ist of one po­lit­i­cal par­ty or the oth­er? Or, those peo­ple who must be favoured since they are sup­port­ers? Will it be some per­son or per­sons who can be poached from the "oth­er side" to re­flect a sym­bol­ic vic­to­ry? In coun­tries world­wide one ex­pects that every gov­ern­ment will at some time or the oth­er em­bark on such re­form, and one ex­pects that the in­di­vid­u­als se­lect­ed to sit on this and any com­mis­sion will de­pend pri­mar­i­ly on po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions. This time, how­ev­er, one is en­cour­aged by the length of time the gov­ern­ment is ac­tu­al­ly tak­ing to ap­point such a com­mis­sion and there is the hope that these ap­point­ments will be more mea­sured and the in­di­vid­u­als se­lect­ed will be based on the cri­te­ria of knowl­edge in the field, ex­per­tise, ex­pe­ri­ence and com­pe­tence. There is al­so the is­sue of en­er­gy. Over time, there have been a num­ber of com­mis­sions es­tab­lished to re-ex­am­ine the Con­sti­tu­tion and to rec­om­mend amend­ments where nec­es­sary. If one looks at the stature of some of the peo­ple who have served (and of­ten with­out com­pen­sa­tion as oc­curred with the Man­ning ap­point­ed com­mis­sion), it is ev­i­dent that not on­ly did they have the knowl­edge but they al­so had the nec­es­sary ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence as well. Per­haps, the weak­ness­es with these com­mis­sions, how­ev­er, is that while nu­mer­ous (and look­ing at some of these they were ex­treme­ly well thought out) rec­om­men­da­tions were made, many of these were not pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic and thus the ma­jor­i­ty of these rec­om­men­da­tions to date have not been im­ple­ment­ed.

In try­ing to raise the is­sue of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, many 'so-called' or self-pro­claimed po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts fo­cus on two ma­jor is­sues-name­ly the re­form of the mod­el of vot­ing (some are sug­gest­ing a mod­el of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, some a mixed mod­el), while oth­ers fo­cus on the pro­pos­al to move to a mod­el of ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­cy. An­oth­er fo­cus has been the need to in­tro­duce a Right to Re­call. But, it should be re­called that a Con­sti­tu­tion which is the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of any coun­try is a large doc­u­ment with sev­er­al di­men­sions. It es­tab­lish­es clear au­thor­i­ty struc­tures in a coun­try, the role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the var­i­ous ac­tors and in­sti­tu­tions and the pro­ce­dures that should be es­tab­lished. In any coun­try with a writ­ten Con­sti­tu­tion, the Con­sti­tu­tion is supreme. Any Con­sti­tu­tion, how­ev­er, is time-bound and has been cre­at­ed for a par­tic­u­lar coun­try at a par­tic­u­lar time. The last amend­ment to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­sti­tu­tion was in 1976, when the coun­try as­sumed Re­pub­li­can sta­tus. More than three decades have passed since the Con­sti­tu­tion was amend­ed and thus, it is ar­gued that it is more than time­ly that the coun­try once again re-ex­am­ines the ex­ist­ing Con­sti­tu­tion and sug­gest amend­ments to make it more rel­e­vant to the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment. Per­haps, this time, in at­tempt­ing to re­vise the Con­sti­tu­tion, a dif­fer­ent mod­el may be em­ployed. With the last at­tempt to re­vise the Con­sti­tu­tion, em­pha­sis was placed on what many liked to re­fer to as a 'bot­tom up' mod­el which was es­sen­tial­ly one where peo­ple in the civ­il so­ci­ety, those groups and or­gan­i­sa­tions were con­sult­ed with re­spect to nec­es­sary amend­ments.

This 'bot­tom up' ap­proach ap­peared to be a dis­mal fail­ure. The turnout for most of the meet­ings was ex­treme­ly poor and the few who turned out to lis­ten were of­ten try­ing to push their own agen­das, how­ev­er self­ish and small they may have been. More­over, many peo­ple had lit­tle or no in­for­ma­tion on the ex­ist­ing Con­sti­tu­tion and thus the views pre­sent­ed were of­ten my­opic. In this new round of try­ing to re­vise the Con­sti­tu­tion, per­haps what may be nec­es­sary is a new ap­proach. What may be nec­es­sary is to break up the Con­sti­tu­tion in its con­stituent parts. Have ex­perts in each area present to the pub­lic-af­ter it is ad­ver­tised and the var­i­ous groups with a par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est in­vit­ed-what is the ex­ist­ing state of that spe­cif­ic area and then sug­gest what may be vi­able op­tions and the out­comes of each of these op­tions. This mod­el is of course more dif­fi­cult and it will mean that those who are to be ap­point­ed to the var­i­ous com­mis­sions must in­deed be the true ex­perts in the field. In a sense it will mean sep­a­rat­ing the sheep from the goat. In oth­er words, dis­sect­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion in­to its many parts will al­low for greater depth and thus may re­sult in well thought out rec­om­men­da­tions both on the part of the civ­il so­ci­ety and on the part of the pol­i­cy mak­ers. Like a true fol­low­er of Ed­mund Burke, though, it is al­ways wise to make in­cre­men­tal changes rather than all en­com­pass­ing and wide­spread re­vi­sions which have not been thought through. It would al­so be use­ful that if be­fore em­bark­ing on a new round of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form that the com­mis­sion mem­bers first ac­quaint them­selves with the dif­fer­ent con­sti­tu­tions over time and their of­fer­ings and even more re­cent, the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Man­ning com­mis­sion. Per­haps, what may emerge, is that more funds may not be re­quired to re­vise the Con­sti­tu­tion since many of the rec­om­men­da­tions pre­sent­ed may be rel­e­vant, while some ar­eas, of course, may call for fur­ther dis­cus­sion. Above all, though, ap­point­ing com­mis­sion mem­bers who come with a blank slate may not be the best ap­proach to re­vis­ing the most im­por­tant doc­u­ment in the coun­try.