Given the steady stream of missteps made by the PP government over the past four years, it would have been a miracle of sorts if the Constitution (Amendment) Bills now before Parliament did not contain a series of such missteps. And I am not referring to the fraudulent Constitution commission and its addendum that is used as a fig-leaf for the unholy imposition of those laws.
We have seen that the Government was misguided with the introduction of the act that purported to give executive authority and a budget to members of the House of Representatives for administrative purposes in the constituencies in which they were elected. While the T&T Guardian, derisively dismissed the budget as a slush fund, it missed the crucial points that the Parliament had no such authority to confer executive powers and moreover, that the constituencies are merely political boundaries for conducting general elections.
The constituencies are not administrative areas according to the laws of T&T; the administrative areas are defined in those acts that promote local government.
Implicit in that misstep was a misreading of the function and purpose of the members of the House of Representatives. To begin with, the member is not an attorney for the constituency; it is impossible for him to represent all the views of the members of the constituency that elects him or even a majority of views if such exists.
To do so would require him to consult the whole of the constituency on all matters that come before the parliament. The result is a parliament in which there is a cacophony of regional voices competing for the national patrimony instead of the Parliament performing its function which is to promote the national good.
This view of the representative as an attorney is in conflict with the Constitution that requires the member to speak his mind freely and to do good to all men. The idea that he should be recalled for doing so is a bit of an absurdity.
The purpose of the election of representatives is to ensure that the whole nation is represented in Parliament. In that way Parliament speaks for the whole nation, even if some people of Debe, Laventille or Tobago disagree with the sentiment of the House. It is a meaningless contrivance to suggest that the Parliament is to be representative of workers or professionals or of the rich and the poor as it is to make it representative of the racial composition of the nation with a runoff vote.
It seems to me, therefore, that instead of trying to ram the constitution bills down our throats, the Government should be promoting an understanding of the constitution before it seeks to implement any change.
Lennie M Nimblett,
St Ann's