Mary K King
?
The Constitution of the Republic of T&T calls for the election of today 41 members to the Lower House of the Parliament which corresponds to 41 spatial constituencies populated by their constituents. It is considered that the members are representatives of the people in the respective constituencies and besides being engaged in the making of laws the members of Parliament act as ombudsmen with regard to the desires of their constituents. The Constitution says that the election process should be based on the first-past-the-post system.
The Constitution also guarantees our freedom of expression and our freedom of association, which translates into our freedom to join or support any political party. Political parties traditionally have been the vehicle through which we vote. Hence the Constitution/law of the land allows the election in any constituency to be contested by more than two parliamentary hopefuls.
Therefore it is obvious that the electoral result in any constituency can result in the candidate who gets the maximum number of votes not having 50 per cent of the votes cast. This has been the status quo for all of our elections since independence; entrenched in the constitutional interpretation of first past the post.
Surely as we develop our democracy it will become necessary to change the Constitution (or the law) to reflect new thinking of the population.
Some of the changes are minor and this can be left to the parliamentary representatives in both Houses wherein the Constitution itself indicates how certain sections can be changed.
Others are more fundamental and reflect major changes of thinking and it is insufficient to leave this decision only to MPs. There is a method that we have been using in some of these cases that involves a commission that holds public consultations on a particular topic. These consultations engage a very small part of the voting public and are insufficient if the change is major and needs a more widespread discussion and a formal decision by the public on the way forward.
The traditional way to get such an exercise done is via a referendum, which also requires an upgrade of our Constitution or laws and should be a precursor to addressing such fundamental changes in the Constitution.
For example these are two competing views on the election process. One is that the parliamentarian should be elected by over 50 per cent of those who cast their vote (though this may at best be 34 per cent or thereabouts of those registered to vote in the constituency). The other is that we need as many voices of differing hues in the Lower House (one may recall Lloyd Best's call for a maco Parliament).
The solution to the first view involves a runoff if the first vote does not throw up a winner with 50 per cent or more of the votes cast, which restricts the chances of the views of smaller parties entering the Parliament, while on the other hand proportional representation (or one of its derivatives) attempts to satisfy the latter view. This is a decision that calls for a referendum.
Hence the first step by any government that is interested in the proper strategic management of the governance of this country is to put in place a legal process that can really unearth publicly how the people feel about, eg a majority vote for the parliamentarian or proportional representation that gives parliamentary exposure to more political views.
My advice is: this Government was put in place to manage the governance of this country and to do so in the present circumstance needs the introduction of a mechanism (promised in the 2010 manifesto), that can better assess the will of the people. Hence the current bill before the Lower House should be withdrawn and the law updated to include the holding of a referendum, after which the views of the people can be sought on the current debate.