Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

While Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar gets set to re­view the stew­ard­ship of her Cab­i­net and mem­bers of state boards, no leg­is­la­tion is in place to re­call ne­glect­ful MPs. The right to re­call non-per­form­ing par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives forms part of the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form plans promised by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) on the elec­tion trail and forms the sixth pil­lar of the par­ty's man­i­festo.

Con­gress of the Peo­ple po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har was on­ly re­cent­ly ap­point­ed head of the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form com­mit­tee. Two years lat­er, though, noth­ing is in place to make MPs ac­count for their in­ac­tions. This is an is­sue, ac­cord­ing to po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Win­ford James, that should have been giv­en some lev­el of pri­or­i­ty.

In fact, ac­cord­ing to James, there should be a dis­tinc­tion be­tween Cab­i­net and MPs if bet­ter gov­er­nance is to be achieved. "Up to this point I have not heard any­thing from the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing the right to re­call MPs for non-per­for­mance. The MPs must not be the same peo­ple who form the ex­ec­u­tive. There must be a dis­tinc­tion be­tween Cab­i­net and the MPs.

The ex­ec­u­tive would on­ly be able to work in re­la­tion to what the MPs de­ter­mine in terms of pol­i­cy. For prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty the ex­ec­u­tive and the MPs can­not be­long to the same group," he told Sun­day Guardian.

Not­ing that the voice of the elec­torate must not be ig­nored, James said con­stituents should have the right to re­call their rep­re­sen­ta­tives if they are dis­sat­is­fied with the rep­re­sen­ta­tion. He ex­plained, "Peo­ple should have the right to re­call their rep­re­sen­ta­tives if they are not sat­is­fied with the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I would like to see leg­is­la­tion where the peo­ple's voice can be heard con­tin­u­ous­ly in a struc­tured way in Par­lia­ment.

"Peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty groups and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions should have a di­rect line to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and should be as­sist­ing with the form­ing of leg­is­la­tion and in the way a com­mu­ni­ty's agen­da and con­cerns are ex­e­cut­ed in Par­lia­ment." The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, one of the five par­ties that came to­geth­er to form the coali­tion PP, has blamed poor gov­er­nance for the protests oc­cur­ring through­out the na­tion.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form over­due

Mean­while, James said while the Law Re­form Com­mit­tee has com­plet­ed the Green Pa­per on In­ter­nal Self Gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go, con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form plans as it re­lates to Trinidad are un­heard of. To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don has crit­i­cised the Green Pa­per say­ing it does not rep­re­sent the views of peo­ple liv­ing on the sis­ter isle. Oth­er "rev­o­lu­tion­ary ideas" pro­posed to be in­tro­duced by PP are:

• Fixed elec­tion dates for na­tion­al and lo­cal elec­tions

• Mech­a­nism for a ref­er­en­dum process

• Lim­it­ing the prime min­is­ter to two suc­ces­sive terms as head of gov­ern­ment

• Rules gov­ern­ing the con­duct of the gov­ern­ment and po­lit­i­cal par­ties dur­ing an elec­tion pe­ri­od

• A stronger In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion

• Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form

James said, "The Gov­ern­ment has em­pha­sised on mat­ters they did not raise on the cam­paign trail. Sim­i­lar­ly, as in the case of the re­call of the MPs, we have not heard any­thing on the is­sue of a prime min­is­ter serv­ing the max­i­mum of on­ly two suc­ces­sive terms. It is an im­por­tant is­sue and should be dealt with as a mat­ter of ur­gent busi­ness so the is­sue of high-hand­ed­ness can­not arise."

Ra­goonath: Con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form in lim­bo

Al­so wad­ing in on the is­sue, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said to date the PP has not de­liv­ered on any of the elec­tion promis­es as it re­lates to con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. "The Gov­ern­ment has not de­liv­ered as yet on their elec­tion cam­paign promise re­gard­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form," a plain speak­ing Ra­goonath said.

Ex­plain­ing that con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form is a dif­fi­cult is­sue to pur­sue, Ra­goonath said the chal­lenge the PP faces is whether gov­ern­ment would get the con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty re­quired to pass the leg­is­la­tion. "I do not know how Mr Ra­mad­har in­tends to start fo­cus­ing on this mat­ter of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form but the prob­lem is the PP does not have the ma­jor­i­ty in the Low­er House to pass the leg­is­la­tion; they are in need of one more mem­ber.

As it re­lates to the Up­per House, the Gov­ern­ment re­quires a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty. The Gov­ern­ment would have to get sup­port from five more peo­ple-ei­ther from the Op­po­si­tion or the in­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors," Ra­goonath said.

For­mer ad­min­is­tra­tions led by prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and Bas­deo Pan­day had both agreed on the need for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. The is­sue of an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent was a mat­ter of con­tention. How­ev­er, both lead­ers were re­moved from of­fice be­fore the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion was passed.