JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 11, 2025

New approach for constitutional reform

Sep­a­rat­ing sheep from goat

by

20120519

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored