Pao­lo Ker­na­han

?You must check out the pho­to­graph on the front page of the Guardian (Nov 4). It pic­tures Patrick Man­ning and Bas­deo Pan­day, both with churl­ish smiles, on the steps of the fortress of in­ep­ti­tude at La Fan­tasie Road, St Ann's.

Take a close look at AG John Je­re­my pos­i­tive­ly glow­er­ing! Throw­ing dag­gers at the back of Pan­day's head. Both ma­jor dailies have the word "agree." Em­bla­zoned above the pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ty is the cus­tom­ary two-hand­ed grasp of feigned sin­cer­i­ty. It is in­deed an as­sault to my very del­i­cate con­sti­tu­tion that, more than fail­ing to con­cur on any cru­cial mat­ters, these two agree on any­thing at all! The thought of agree­ment on is­sues per­ti­nent to the con­sti­tu­tion be­tween these two Pre­cam­bri­an thinkers is at the same time pro­found­ly dis­com­bob­u­lat­ing and trou­bling. The events are clear in my mind, the dates un­for­tu­nate­ly are not. Be­fore the UNC ever came to pow­er, the op­po­si­tion was trum­pet­ing the dire need for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, cit­ing the in­ade- qua­cy of the dat­ed doc­u­ment to prop­er­ly grap­ple with elec­toral is­sues and the com­plex­i­ties of an evolv­ing plur­al so­ci­ety. For the PNM, it was the PIP (par­ty in pow­er) so there was no great ur­gency to over­haul this guid­ing leg­isla­tive ta­pes­try. Not sur­pris­ing­ly when Man­ning bounce his head, hand­ing the coun­try to the UNC af­ter on­ly a three-year man­date, the PNM now in op­po­si­tion was de­mand­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. It was Pan­day's turn to say "what is your rush, I now move in de house!"

The rea­son that I sum­mon the ghosts of po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­ence past is to dri­ve this point home: con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form must be tak­en out of the hands of the politi­cians and de­ter­mined by the peo­ple. Trinida­di­ans/To­bag­o­ni­ans are at grave risk of wak­ing up one morn­ing and find­ing that they have been ad­min­is­tered a new con­sti­tu­tion­al sup­pos­i­to­ry with nary a whim­per on the mat­ter. I dare say if that hap­pens it is your own fault. When politi­cians speak of con­sul­ta­tion, what they re­al­ly mean is that they are go­ing to come in­to your com­mu­ni­ty and tell you how it is go­ing to go down. You will be giv­en the to­ken op­por­tu­ni­ty to stand at the mi­cro­phone and avail your­self of the cathar­sis of ob­ject­ing to a politi­cian in a pub­lic fo­rum, and be car­ried aloft on a crest of vil­lagers' hands for brave­ly "buck­ing the sys­tem." None of this will mat­ter of course be­cause your opin­ion is not worth a pound of goat mar­bles. Con­sul­ta­tion in this coun­try means "you were told!" There is a rea­son why gov­ern­ments are al­lowed to get away with this. Lloyd Best (he is at peace now hav­ing left this bac­cha­nal be­hind) was one of the strongest pro­po­nents of cit­i­zen in­volve­ment in the process of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. He was part of an or­gan­i­sa­tion that held pub­lic meet­ings to give the av­er­age John­ny punch clock and Sal­ly house­wife at the out­set a work­ing knowl­edge of what change was be­ing pro­posed for. Af­ter all, you don't sim­ply change some­thing be­cause some­one tells you too, right?

In most cas­es those pub­lic meet­ings were very poor­ly at­tend­ed. I would wa­ger that not even the of­fer of free booze and a caul­dron of wild meat would have drawn more than 30 peo­ple. There is a pro­found dis­con­nect be­tween gov­er­nance and the peo­ple in this coun­try, due in part to the pauci­ty of ed­u­ca­tion in schools about the in­sti­tu­tions that sup­port our pre­tence at democ­ra­cy. Sure, every now and then a school will cob­ble to­geth­er a group of stu­dents and fer­ry them to Par­lia­ment to stage a low-rent play on the func­tions of that in­sti­tu­tion. There is how­ev­er no for­mal teach­ing, as far as I am aware, on the ba­sic tenets of a bi­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture in our na­tion's schools. Do our chil­dren think that the Up­per and Low­er Hous­es "is ah up­stairs and dongstairs house?" This is why of­ten when cit­i­zens are polled in the streets by re­porters on their views of im­por­tant na­tion­al con­cerns you get the ini­tial vac­u­ous gaze fol­lowed by re­spons­es like,"Well dem is de gu­va­ment, dey know what it is dey doin'" or ,"But look what you aksin' me!" There is an or­gan­i­sa­tion work­ing to en­sure that every­one in this coun­try gets in on the ground floor of the un­doubt­ed­ly daunt­ing trans­for­ma­tion which we must un­der­take. Words like ref­er­en­dum and re­call and pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion are be­ing leaked in­to the drink­ing wa­ter in or­der to fos­ter not on­ly de­bate but a spir­it of cit­i­zen pol­i­tics.

You should be very con­cerned that the Prime Min­is­ter has, as far as he is con­cerned, smoth­ered em­bers of query by say­ing "pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion can­not work here." Well of course it can­not work here be­cause a sys­tem that would as­sign val­ue to each vote, al­low­ing a par­ty to win seats based on the num­ber of votes cast in its name, would un­der­mine the cul­ture of trib­al­ism keep­ing cit­i­zens teth­ered to the ide­ol­o­gy of PNM area or UNC area. I am no spokesper­son for the COP and I have my own feel­ings about Win­ston Dook­er­an at the helm of any po­lit­i­cal par­ty, but one can­not de­ny that in the last elec­tion, that Franken­stein of fresh blood and old bones gar­nered 148,000 votes, or rough­ly 24 per cent of the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion yet ...not ah seat fuh dem! This means that all of those peo­ple have no rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Par­lia­ment. That, sim­ply put, is in­sane. Even as the Gov­ern­ment has a small group of peo­ple work­ing on a doc­u­ment that will have a deep and last­ing im­pact on your lives, through the mech­a­nism of ref­er­en­dum you could have a di­rect say in what even­tu­al­ly ma­te­ri­alis­es in the way of a guid­ing tome of gov­er­nance.

Mech­a­nisms such as re­call and ref­er­en­dum are wide­ly used in oth­er coun­tries and give cit­i­zens a di­rect say on is­sues not on­ly of na­tion­al im­por­tance, but they can yank politi­cians for non-per­for­mance or mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. Just spend a minute think­ing of the im­pli­ca­tions of such a trap door in our pol­i­tics giv­en the past year that we have had with Karen, Mar­tin, Patrick and com­pa­ny. The re­al ques­tion I go back to is: how many of you will an­swer the call to im­merse your­selves in a process that will ul­ti­mate­ly shape the kind of coun­try that you have to live in? It is my un­der­stand­ing that re­cent­ly, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Hamid Ghany held one of these con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form meet­ings and he was able to at­tract 18 peo­ple. With pan, parang and pork in the air, and beads, boobs and bat­tam soon to fol­low, I know se­ri­ous ini­tia­tives will be hard pressed to bend the ear of the av­er­age Tri­ni with so much ting to eat and drink! A group called yestt is try­ing to stim­u­late pub­lic de­bate on the is­sues that I have just out­lined through an up­com­ing con­fer­ence. The hope is that the move­ment can at­tract re­cep­tive minds from busi­ness, labour and young peo­ple to ex­plore these al­ter­na­tives so that they can de­cide for them­selves the best mech­a­nisms for gov­er­nance in this coun­try.

Or you could leave the pol­i­tics to the politi­cians and when you get an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent land­ing the ex­ec­u­tive chop­per in the Sa­van­nah and sit­ting in the ex­ec­u­tive box at the Cen­tre for the Per­form­ing Arts then leav­ing in the ex­ec­u­tive May­bach while you are stand­ing in line 400 peo­ple deep for a roll of gov­ern­ment-is­sue toi­let tis­sue made from re­cy­cled head­line, keep your a-- kwart!