Sat Ma­haraj

When Nizam Mo­hammed was un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly and with­out valid ex­pla­na­tions re­moved as chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) ap­prox­i­mate­ly two years ago, the Sanatan Dhar-ma Ma­ha Sab­ha shout­ed in the na­tion­al me­dia that "Max must go." The ed­i­to­r­i­al of Ju­ly 13 of an­oth­er news­pa­per car­ried the head­line, "Good­bye Max."

Any Pres­i­dent of T&T is pro­vid­ed tremen­dous pow­er and au­thor­i­ty as en­shrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion. Not on­ly is he/she the Head of State, but "ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go" is al­so vest­ed in the Pres­i­dent. The Pres­i­dent is com­man­der-in-chief of the armed forces and T&T De­fence Force, which in­cludes the Reg­i­ment, the Coast Guard, the Air Guard and the De­fence Force Re­serves.

The Pres­i­dent al­so has the pow­er to ap­point the Prime Min­is­ter, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and oth­er min­is­ters and a num­ber of sen­a­tors on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter or the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. There are, how­ev­er, in­stances in the past where some ap­point­ments were made di­rect­ly by the Pres­i­dent with­out ref­er­ence to ei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter or the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.

The Of­fice of Pres­i­dent has au­thor­i­ty to par­don, stay an ex­e­cu­tion, re­duce the form of pun- ish­ment or re­mit a sen­tence. The Pres­i­dent is al­so in­formed on a week­ly ba­sis by the Prime Min­is­ter on mat­ters con­cern­ing the gov­ern­ment. The Pres­i­dent, af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter and Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, has au­thor­i­ty to make ap­point­ments which in­clude the Chief Jus­tice and Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court, the Om­buds­man, mem­bers of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, mem­bers of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, mem­bers of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, mem­bers of the Salary Re- view Com­mis­sion, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion oth­er state au­thor­i­ties.

The Pres­i­dent, how­ev­er, is ex­pect­ed to stay above the pol­i­tics of T&T. We, how­ev­er, can point to oc­ca­sions when the hold­er of the of­fice in­ter­vened in the pol­i­tics of the land in a prej­u­di­cial man­ner. When Er­ic Eu­stace Williams, T&T's first Prime Min­is­ter, died while in of­fice in 1981, then Pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke in­ter­vened to ap­point a re­place­ment that to this day has not been ex­plained to the pop­u­la­tion.

At the death of Williams, Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed and Er­rol Ma­habir were the se­nior deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). These se­nior aides of the de­ceased Prime Min­is­ter were by­passed by Sir El­lis and a vir­tu­al po­lit­i­cal light­weight called George Cham­bers was ap­point­ed. We saw this as a pure­ly racial ap­point­ment and it came to pass that Cham­bers him­self was a fail­ure as a prime min­is­ter.

Arthur Napoleon Ray­mond Robin­son was the third Pres­i­dent of T&T, serv­ing from March 19, 1997, to March 17, 2003. Dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy a gen­er­al elec­tion took place in 2001 which re­sult­ed in a tie be­tween the op­pos­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties-the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) led by Bas­deo Pan­day and the PNM led by Patrick Man­ning, each get­ting 18 seats in a 36 seat Par­lia­ment. The peo­ple of T&T were left with a hung Par­lia­ment.

Both Pan­day and Man­ning met with the Pres­i­dent and we were in­formed that Mr Robin­son was asked to make the de­ci­sion on who would be ap­point­ed the Prime Min­is­ter. With the 18-18 tie, the UNC had thou­sands of votes more than those ac­cu­mu­lat­ed by the PNM and many thought that this would be the ma­jor fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing who would be ap­point­ed Prime Min­is­ter.

In­stead, in De­cem­ber, Pres­i­dent Robin­son award­ed the PNM the Gov­ern­ment of T&T. The de­ci­sion was made un­der "moral and spir­i­tu­al grounds." This was naked in­ter­fer­ence by a Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic in­to the pol­i­tics of the land. The Ma­ha Sab­ha agrees with the pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned ed­i­to­r­i­al in an­oth­er news­pa­per which wrote:

"To be blunt we see Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's mulling the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a third term for Pres­i­dent George Max-well Richards as an un­nec­es­sary dis­play of ex­ces­sive po­lite­ness, bor­der­ing on ma­m­aguy­ism. For a host of rea­sons, chiefly his per­son­al record in that of­fice and the work­ings of the Elec­toral Col­lege that choos­es a Head of State, there is not a snow­ball's chance in hell of Richards see­ing a third term, in our view.

"Yet Richards was any­thing but grace­ful to­wards the Gov­ern­ment in his ad­dress to Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day at Tow­er D of the Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain. A close look at his speech re­veals that he went to town on the Gov­ern­ment, sur­rep­ti­tious­ly drop­ping in­nu­en­dos left, right and cen­tre. His calls for the in­de­pen­dence of the Par­lia­ment, acad­e­mia, ser­vice com­mis­sions, the pres­i­den­cy and the army and po­lice were in fact point­ed crit­i­cisms at the present Gov­ern­ment, which in our view are un­proven and open to de­bate.

"Giv­en the adage that peo­ple who live in glass hous­es must not throw stones, we'd use the speech as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­am­ine Richards' own record in of­fice. In our view the present ad­min­is­tra­tion has not de­scend­ed to the depths of cor­rup­tion, squan­der­ma­nia and po­ten­tial­ly dic­ta­to­r­i­al con­duct of the for­mer Patrick Man­ning regime, so we ask why is Richards crit­i­cis­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship but had nev­er warned about the far worse cor­rup­tion and far worse threats to democ­ra­cy posed by the for­mer regime?"

Good­bye, Mr Pres­i­dent.

• Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha