Mick­ela Pan­day

The re­cent "he said, she said" spat be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona has done our coun­try lit­tle good. If two of the high­est of­fice hold­ers in our land are seen to be–di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly–pub­licly ac­cus­ing one an­oth­er of be­ing un­truth­ful, our na­tion's lead­er­ship is caus­ing a loss of con­fi­dence in it­self and is in cri­sis.

It all could have been avoid­ed but for the ap­par­ent po­lit­i­cal machi­na­tions which led to it. There are those who be­lieve this is lit­tle more than the usu­al PNM tac­tic of sala­cious di­ver­sion away from its in­ept gov­er­nance and lack of ideas to avoid fo­cus on the bud­get that was loom­ing, and to min­imise the neg­a­tive ef­fects of hard­ship, a low­er stan­dard of liv­ing and its out­right fail­ure to im­ple­ment any re­al poli­cies to im­prove the lives of our cit­i­zens. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the nu­mer­ous con­tro­ver­sies in­volv­ing the Pres­i­dent made him an easy tar­get.

Over the last few weeks, there were ar­ti­cles about ir­reg­u­lar ex­pen­di­ture by the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent which was not­ed in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port. There was al­so the fail­ure of that Of­fice to an­swer the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's queries, the pro­cure­ment of wine from Italy in bot­tles la­belled with the Coat of Arms in which Mrs Car­mona's "for­mer styl­ist" was in­volved, and the meet­ing be­tween the Pres­i­dent and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on Sep­tem­ber 5, which was deemed by a se­nior coun­sel to be con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly "im­prop­er" and "in­ap­pro­pri­ate".

In re­sponse, last Wednes­day the Pres­i­dent de­liv­ered a state­ment at a press con­fer­ence. He de­fend­ed the pro­cure­ment of the wine as cost sav­ing, in­formed us that the la­bels bore the Pres­i­den­tial Crest, not the Coat of Arms, de­nied that the per­son de­scribed as his wife's "for­mer styl­ist" was in­volved in the pro­cure­ment, de­nied there was any "mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion" of funds in his Of­fice, and de­fend­ed the pay­ment to him of a hous­ing al­lowance.

In re­tort to the of­fence tak­en by the Prime Min­is­ter to his meet­ing with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Pres­i­dent said he act­ed with­in his con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mit, that he had no less than three times in­formed the Prime Min­is­ter that he in­tend­ed to meet with the min­is­ter, and that the Prime Min­is­ter sup­port­ed him. It was up to the pub­lic to ac­cept his ex­pla­na­tions.

The very next day, at the post Cab­i­net press brief­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley re­spond­ed and pub­licly de­nied he had giv­en con­sent to the Pres­i­dent on three oc­ca­sions to hold the meet­ing. The Prime Min­is­ter said the min­is­ter had in­formed him that Pres­i­dent Car­mona want­ed to meet with him, but was un­sure as to what and as­sum­ing that it had to do with the Pres­i­dent's se­cu­ri­ty, told the min­is­ter to go ahead and see what it was about. The min­is­ter ad­mit­ted at the brief­ing that he had de­cid­ed to take the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Chief of De­fence Staff with him to the meet­ing.

Dr Row­ley said he on­ly found out on the fol­low­ing Sun­day from a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle that the Pres­i­dent had "chaired a ma­jor na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty meet­ing," which alarmed him. The next day, he met at his of­fice "con­sid­er­able doc­u­men­ta­tion re­lat­ing to this meet­ing, a 30-point doc­u­ment con­cern­ing every area of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty," with a cov­er­ing let­ter signed by Pres­i­dent Car­mona.

Fol­low­ing in the path of his pre­de­ces­sor, as has be­come the norm, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley then sought the opin­ion of se­nior coun­sel on the Pres­i­dent's ac­tions, which end­ed up in the me­dia.

With­out tak­ing a view as to who is telling the truth, it is sub­mit­ted, the ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty of T&T is, by the Con­sti­tu­tion, vest­ed in the Pres­i­dent. Be­cause the Con­sti­tu­tion es­tab­lish­es a Cab­i­net which has gen­er­al di­rec­tion and con­trol of the Gov­ern­ment, and the Cab­i­net is head­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter, it is the Prime Min­is­ter, not the Pres­i­dent, who wields ex­ec­u­tive pow­er. While the Prime Min­is­ter is man­dat­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion to keep the Pres­i­dent ful­ly in­formed con­cern­ing the gen­er­al con­duct of the Gov­ern­ment and to fur­nish the Pres­i­dent, if re­quest­ed, with in­for­ma­tion with re­spect to any par­tic­u­lar mat­ter re­lat­ing to the Gov­ern­ment, it is the Prime Min­is­ter who is in charge of run­ning the coun­try.

Noth­ing pre­vents the Pres­i­dent invit­ing any­one, in­clud­ing a min­is­ter, to a meet­ing. In the case of a min­is­ter, once the Prime Min­is­ter knows of it and agrees to it, the Pres­i­dent has not done any­thing wrong. In this case the Prime Min­is­ter okayed the min­is­ter's at­ten­dance at the meet­ing, and it was the min­is­ter who took the oth­er key na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty fig­ures with him.

The Pres­i­dent then com­mu­ni­cat­ed pri­vate­ly and con­fi­den­tial­ly to the Prime Min­is­ter alone on the meet­ing and, ap­par­ent­ly, gra­tu­itous­ly and per­haps a bit over en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, gave pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy sug­ges­tions. The Pres­i­dent may have act­ed awk­ward­ly, but it ap­pears with good in­ten­tions, and not out­side his con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mit.

Sad­ly, the PNM's pub­lic char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion oth­er­wise, and both the Prime Min­is­ter's and the Pres­i­dent's pub­lic paint­ing of each oth­er as strangers to the truth, does our coun­try no good. All of this should have been han­dled pri­vate­ly and diplo­mat­i­cal­ly. That be­ing said, it is my hope that our lead­ers take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the burn­ing is­sue of the need for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.