Why should a Prime Minister have a say in who gets a national award? What makes a Prime Minister anymore capable of making a fair and incisive judgment as to the quality of the contribution of an individual to the national good compared to independent others? On the contrary, given the political and electoral history of this country, a Prime Minister is absolutely unsuited to making a balanced, objective assessment in such matters.The above is an easy example of how political bias is transfused into the governance structure and results in ethnically and politically tainted decision-making to favour one group or the other. What is therefore being advocated is the reduction and restriction of the decision-making power of the Prime Minister and his/her Cabinet. Then there is the need to strengthen existing institutions under the Constitution and create new and independent ones. This columnist is suggesting that such measures are desperately needed to enhance the democracy and bring equity to the allocation and distribution of state resources. The clear objective would be to reduce racial and group conflict in what the sociologists call a plural society in which the contest is not only about the allocation of resources and developmental projects, but also about the Govern- ment giving a "bligh" to cultural ascendancy of one group over the other. As outlined last week, our political history is one of parties being formed, fashioned and mobilised along lines of ethnicity and race: Indo and Afro-Trinidad. One consequence has been that when the parties get into office there has been a lopsided attempt at development and serious and often legitimate questions surrounding appointments made, contracts given out on the basis of race and obscene partisanship.
Of course there have been deviations from that general pattern. The heavy industrial estate was established at Pt Lisas by the PNM in a largely Indo-Trinidad area outside the natural power base of the PNM. The Panday government made important symbolic decisions that favoured elements of the Afro-community, such as establishing the Shouter Baptist Liberation Day and incorporating the Orisha faith. But on both sides crossover resource allocation has been the exception. In all of the discussion that has taken place over the last 15 years on constitutional reform, none of the political parties has advanced as a reason for changing the Constitution the need for it to deliver goods and services in a transparent and equitable manner as a means of bringing equity, trust and peace to the society, which-ever the ethnic party in power. Instead, most of the discussion has centred around whether there should be an executive president or not, a discussion essentially to give even greater power in an individual from either political tribe. Increasingly, the political culture is moving towards layers of political appointees in the public service, inclusive of the foreign service, ministries, state enterprises and constructed behemoths such as Udecott to funnel funds to political supporters belonging to party and ethnicity. The growth of additional patronage has to be severely curtailed by strengthening the insti- tutions and stipulating policies that would guide the allocation of resources and the structure of the public service.For instance, the expenditure of billions must involve consultation and discussion, not only in the Parliament, but with the population outside of the legislature, the real shareholders of the enterprise. Manning undermined the tenders committee and created the special purpose state enterprises to spend as he pleased.
The Hyatali Constitutional Commission (1987) grappled with this issue of consultation on national issues. The Wooding Commission (1976) raised the matter of the system of proportional representation; Williams shot it down because it would interfere with PNM majorities and so control of the government.In the same manner that there have to be specific constitutional and institutional arrangements to settle the issues of conflict, suspicion and to achieve some measure of equity between Tobago and Trinidad, the same is surely applicable to counter the control of total power by one tribe or the other in the interest of its group. These are issues not peculiar to T&T but have had much attention in multi-ethnic states such as Fiji, Malaysia, Guyana and Suriname. As a result of the failure of such states to find mechanisms to bring greater equilibrium into the governance structure, there have been coups, open race-based rioting, with the military stepping in at times to exercise dictatorial power.Among the constitutional options that have been attempted to bring balance and equity is what is called consociationalism. The model is hundreds of years old and essentially attempts to distribute representation and power across contesting groups.It has been attempted with varying levels of success or non-success in Europe (the European Union is said to be a variant of consociationalism), Africa, North America. Our own (Caribbean) Sir Arthur Lewis wrote extensively about it, making applications for use in Nigeria. Of course there are criticisms of the model, including that it tends to create separate existence. But which model satisfies all? Indeed, countries all over the Middle East, in Europe, Britain and yes the USA are experiencing serious conflict with groups not satisfied that governance models are working in the interest of the majority and disadvantaging segments of the society.
However, it is not so much that this column is advocating consociationalism, socialism or any other model. Rather, it is saying that the country has to face the reality that the constitutional and institutional arrangements, the culture of exercising power, the system for delivering goods and services in an equitable manner to citizens have failed.There is also the need to make politicians accountable: Manning studiously ignored calls for transparency on Udecott, on the "prophetess;" Persad-Bissessar does not have to account beyond saying the Reshmi appointment was a "mistake."It may be argued that what is being advocated takes power away from elected majorities and distributes same to non-elected institutions. But in several parts of the world today, including the West (not just an Arab Spring to remove the dictators), people and their institutions are demanding to share in the power.What is more, they are not prepared to elect governments, allow them to do as they choose, and then intervene after five years.