Shal­iza Has­sanali

?Dr Olabisi Kuboni, head of the grad­u­ates pro­gramme at Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, is in­sist­ing that any new con­sti­tu­tion pre­sent­ed to cit­i­zens should help re­duce po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the gov­er­nance of the coun­try. Kuboni was giv­ing her views on Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion dur­ing a civ­il so­ci­ety meet­ing host­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Fo­rum (CRF) at Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union, Port-of-Spain, last Thurs­day.

Hav­ing ex­am­ined the con­tro­ver­sial draft doc­u­ment, Kuboni said one of the ar­eas it lacked was broad prin­ci­ples. "We need to work to­geth­er as a coali­tion. We should have some kind of con­sen­sus about the prin­ci­ples on which our con­sti­tu­tion is based," Kuboni told the packed hall. Kuboni said while the PM had been em­pha­sis­ing on mech­a­nisms dur­ing his "col­lege" meet­ings, she won­dered what sig­nif­i­cance it would have on the gov­er­nance of the coun­try.

A mem­ber of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Fo­rum (CRF), Kuboni said while some peo­ple felt there was no need to change the present con­sti­tu­tion, "it does not an­swer cer­tain ques­tions." She said the CRF was of the view that rather than re­vise the con­sti­tu­tion, it should be re­formed. "Mech­a­nisms have to be built in our con­sti­tu­tion that re­duce the force and in­flu­ence of the po­lit­i­cal par­ty, in terms of gov­er­nance of the coun­try."

With lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due next year, Kuboni said cit­i­zens ought to make de­mands on any par­ty that want­ed to get in­to of­fice.

Kuboni said when one looked at the role of the pres­i­dent in the work­ing doc­u­ment, it put so much pow­er in­to the hands of one in­di­vid­ual, which was bad enough. "But that is how we have it in the coun­try....that one be­ing can be made in­to an all-pow­er be­ing to man­age over 1.3 mil­lion of us, be­cause we have a po­lit­i­cal struc­ture that al­lows that one po­lit­i­cal par­ty to come in just like that."

'Give peo­ple a greater say'

Kuboni said the pres­i­dent, ac­cord­ing the draft doc­u­ment, could al­so run as a can­di­date in a po­lit­i­cal con­stituen­cy and as a mem­ber of a par­ty. Stat­ing that the CRF was not in sup­port of this, Kuboni said they would pre­fer if the head of state be elect­ed di­rect­ly by the peo­ple, re­gard­less of what po­lit­i­cal ties he or she may have. "So any one who wants to run for ex­ec­u­tive prime min­is­ter can put them­selves up and let them tell the na­tion what qual­i­fies him or her to be that ex­ec­u­tive prime min­is­ter."

As a buffer to min­imise the in­flu­ence of the po­lit­i­cal par­ty, Kuboni said cit­i­zens had to height­en their role in the gov­er­nance process. Kuboni said un­der our present con­sti­tu­tion, 51 per cent of the Sen­ate was elect­ed by the ma­jor­i­ty par­ty af­ter an elec­tion. Un­der Man­ning's pro­posed doc­u­ment, Kuboni said the Pres­i­dent had a di­rect say in about 80 per cent of what con­sti­tut­ed the Sen­ate. "And we have to take se­ri­ous note of that."

One of the things the CRF had pro­posed, Kuboni said, was to have a greater say and must con­sti­tute the ma­jor­i­ty in the Up­per House of Par­lia­ment.

"Since the Low­er House in Par­lia­ment is elect­ed on a par­ty ba­sis, why not let us have an Up­per House that is not pri­mar­i­ly con­sti­tut­ed on the ba­sis of par­ty pol­i­tics?"

Michael Theodore, who al­so ad­dressed the meet­ing, said when one thought of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, two things came to mind: process and sub­stance.

"If the process is not right, no mat­ter how good and ide­al the sub­stance may be, you would have killed the op­por­tu­ni­ty, be­cause the process is bad."

Stat­ing that the draft doc­u­ment was flawed, Theodore sug­gest­ed that it be scrapped and restart­ed if we want our peo­ple to be em­pow­ered and to have democ­ra­cy.