SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Con­sti­tu­tion makes pro­vi­sion for a sen­a­tor to act as Prime Min­is­ter in the ab­sence of the PM. This point was made by po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany as he an­swered ques­tions from the pub­lic, af­ter his lec­ture on Wednes­day night at the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion Hall.The lec­ture was part of the pub­lic lec­ture on the rel­e­vance of the Sen­ate in a mod­ern democ­ra­cy, on the 50th an­niver­sary of bi­cam­er­al­ism in T&T.

Ghany said the Con­sti­tu­tion re­ferred to a mem­ber of the Cab­i­net be­ing au­tho­rised to per­form the func­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter."The of­fice of the PM is but one of the port­fo­lios that ex­ist in the con­text of the Cab­i­net," he said.Ghany said a sen­a­tor act­ing as the PM hap­pened un­der the PNM and un­der the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion of 1995-2001, where Bas­deo Pan­day, the then Prime Min­is­ter, ap­point­ed Sen­a­tor Lins­day Gillette to act as PM.

He said the draft con­sti­tu­tion put to­geth­er by Sir El­lis Clarke in 2006 rec­om­mend­ed pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the Sen­ate. He said there were ten pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on this draft, be­fore the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion. Ghany said, how­ev­er, that a re­search re­port on the con­sul­ta­tion nev­er came to pass be­cause of the change in gov­ern­ment.

He said the Wood­ing Com­mis­sion of the 1970s pro­posed the abo­li­tion of the Sen­ate and the in­tro­duc­tion of a com­mit­tee of elect­ed and pro­por­tion­al mem­bers. He added, how­ev­er, that Dr Er­ic Williams, the prime min­is­ter at the time, was not in favour of this plan. Ghany said in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors were nec­es­sary. He sug­gest­ed a study to look at the vot­ing pat­terns of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors when Ch­agua­nas may­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar ex­pressed the view that some in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors were al­so toe­ing par­ty lines.

He said at one time in T&T's his­to­ry, the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors were the on­ly op­po­si­tion giv­en to the gov­ern­ment.Re­call­ing the events of 1971, Ghany said Er­ic Williams called the gen­er­al elec­tion in May 1971, in­stead of its con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due date in No­vem­ber of that year.Eight can­di­dates went up un­op­posed while the PNM cap­tured the ma­jor­i­ty of the votes, push­ing aside the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty led by Bhadase Sagan Ma­haraj.

When Par­lia­ment got go­ing in June 1971, the po­si­tion of Leader of Op­po­si­tion was de­clared va­cant by Sir Solomon Ho­choy, the then Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al. Sev­en in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors were then ap­point­ed and were the on­ly op­po­si­tion the PNM faced in 1971-1972.In 1972, Roy Richard­son re­signed as par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and was ap­point­ed as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.Among the Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors Richard­son ap­point­ed was Bas­deo Pan­day, who made his en­try in­to pol­i­tics.

The four Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors were changed in 1972.Ghany said the T&T ex­pe­ri­ence as­sist­ed oth­er re­gion­al coun­tries in the fram­ing of their con­sti­tu­tion.He said in Ja­maica, the PM could ap­point op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors if an op­po­si­tion was not present.