DR HAMID GHANY

Fifty years ago last Fri­day, the Marl­bor­ough House Con­fer­ence on In­de­pen­dence for Trinidad and To­ba­go end­ed. This con­fer­ence cleared the way for Trinidad and To­ba­go to move of­fi­cial­ly to­wards its own in­de­pen­dence. The ac­tu­al date was not set at the con­fer­ence, but would be de­ter­mined lat­er.

One of the main high­lights of the con­fer­ence was the fact that the op­po­si­tion del­e­ga­tion (Dr R Capildeo, A Sinanan, T Ho­sein, SC, Ma­haraj, LF Seuk­er­an and PG Far­quhar) did not agree with the mod­el of the Sen­ate that was pro­posed for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This mod­el was be­ing al­tered for the 1962 in­de­pen­dence con­sti­tu­tion from what had been pre­vi­ous­ly ap­proved for the 1961 in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment con­sti­tu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the "Re­port of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­sti­tu­tion­al Dis­cus­sions held in Lon­don in No­vem­ber 1959 and Trinidad in June 1960":

"The Sec­re­tary of State con­sid­ered, how­ev­er, af­ter tak­ing in­to ac­count rep­re­sen­ta­tions made by mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion, the Cham­ber of Com­merce and oth­er in­ter­ests in Trinidad and To­ba­go, that it would be right that on­ly a pro­por­tion of the mem­bers should be ap­point­ed on the Pre­mier's ad­vice.

Pro­vi­sion should al­so be made for cer­tain mem­bers to be ap­point­ed on the ad­vice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, and for oth­er mem­bers to be ap­point­ed in the Gov­er­nor's dis­cre­tion as rep­re­sent­ing the main re­li­gious, eco­nom­ic and so­cial in­ter­ests in the ter­ri­to­ry." (Para 13).

This phi­los­o­phy was al­tered in the "Re­port of the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­de­pen­dence Con­fer­ence 1962" that was held at Marl­bor­ough House in para­graph 18 as fol­lows: "The Up­per House will con­sist of 24 Sen­a­tors of whom 13 will be ap­point­ed by the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter, four by the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al on the ad­vice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and sev­en by the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter af­ter con­sul­ta­tion by the lat­ter with those re­li­gious, eco­nom­ic or so­cial bod­ies or as­so­ci­a­tions from which the Prime Min­is­ter con­sid­ers that such Sen­a­tors should be se­lect­ed. (The Op­po­si­tion del­e­gates did not ac­cept the pro­vi­sions of this para­graph)."

Es­sen­tial­ly, the fun­da­men­tal ob­jec­tion was against the fact that the so-called in­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, who would rep­re­sent the main "re­li­gious, eco­nom­ic and so­cial in­ter­ests," were no longer go­ing to be ap­point­ed by gu­ber­na­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion, but rather on the ba­sis of prime min­is­te­r­i­al ad­vice.

This was even­tu­al­ly al­tered when the re­pub­li­can con­sti­tu­tion came in­to be­ing in 1976 by hav­ing this cat­e­go­ry of Sen­a­tors now ap­point­ed on the ba­sis of pres­i­den­tial dis­cre­tion. Un­der­stand­ing the philo­soph­i­cal roots from which our Sen­ate sprang would take us on a jour­ney that would start with the Bryce Re­port on the re­form of the House of Lords in 1918 and take us through the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia Act 1935, the 1945 re­port of the Soul­bury Com­mis­sion that vis­it­ed Cey­lon, the im­ple­men­ta­tion of those re­forms in Cey­lon in 1946, the Wadding­ton Com­mis­sion Re­port on British Guiana of 1951, Er­ic Williams' pub­lic lec­tures and pro­pos­als on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form in 1955, his 1958 pro­pos­als and sub­se­quent ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Colo­nial Of­fice for a Sen­ate in 1959 and 1960, the pol­i­cy con­ces­sions by the Colo­nial Of­fice in 1961 and their al­ter­ation in 1962.

An­oth­er im­por­tant high­light of the Marl­bor­ough House con­fer­ence would in­clude the state­ment made by Er­ic Williams which is record­ed at para­graph 59 of the Re­port as fol­lows: "Af­ter hear­ing an im­por­tant state­ment by the Pre­mier of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Con­fer­ence agreed that it was a mat­ter of great im­por­tance to ho­n­our the con­ven­tion where­by the Prime Min­is­ter con­sults the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on all ap­pro­pri­ate oc­ca­sions, in par­tic­u­lar on all mat­ters of na­tion­al con­cern, in­clud­ing ap­point­ments to suit­able of­fices of a na­tion­al char­ac­ter-for ex­am­ple the chair­man­ship of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion."

This was a piv­otal mo­ment in the con­fer­ence, as Williams ap­peared to be mak­ing a con­ces­sion to the Op­po­si­tion on a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of con­sul­ta­tion, bear­ing in mind that the po­ten­tial for di­vi­sive­ness af­ter in­de­pen­dence had to be avert­ed.

Williams would say some 12 years af­ter­wards, in de­bat­ing the Wood­ing Re­port on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, that the process had not worked. As a con­se­quence, he felt that this process ought to have been hand­ed over to the new of­fice of Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic. This was done when that of­fice was cre­at­ed in 1976.

The third po­lit­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant di­men­sion of the Marl­bor­ough House con­fer­ence was record­ed at para­graph 57 of the re­port as fol­lows: "The first rule will be amend­ed to pro­vide that the elec­torate will, so far as is prac­ti­ca­ble, be equal in all con­stituen­cies but that it will not in any con­stituen­cy (oth­er than con­stituen­cies in To­ba­go) ex­ceed 110 per cent nor be less than 90 per cent of the to­tal elec­torate di­vid­ed by the num­ber of con­stituen­cies. The same gen­er­al prin­ci­ple will ap­ply to To­ba­go, pro­vid­ed that To­ba­go shall have not less than two seats."

This pro­pos­al gave spe­cial recog­ni­tion to To­ba­go by in­tro­duc­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al for­mu­la that con­firmed a min­i­mum num­ber of con­stituen­cies for the is­land. For the first time in the 1961 gen­er­al elec­tion, there were two con­stituen­cies in To­ba­go.