Michael Del­blond

As the ca­lyp­son­ian Chalkie once sang, "In this coun­try, you've got to learn to laugh." That is es­pe­cial­ly so with all the hoopla and tra la la about the con­tents, in­ter­pre­ta­tion and rel­e­vance of our re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion. We still have a prob­lem in de­ci­pher­ing what "a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency" means and can on­ly sup­pose that it means "a coun­try­wide state of emer­gency" with the cur­few lim­it­ed to cer­tain ar­eas des­ig­nat­ed as "hot spots." Of course, we may well be wrong. But if you have a prob­lem with dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween "out­doors" and "in­doors" you could have found your­self be­ing trans­port­ed, peremp­to­ri­ly, by some overea­ger of­fi­cer to less than salu­bri­ous ac­com­mo­da­tion in less that ge­nial com­pa­ny. As they say, "what is fun for school chil­dren is death for cra­paud."

But we're used to tough times, aren't we? We have for decades been lured in­to a false com­plai­sance that we had fol­lowed the West­min­ster mod­el of gov­er­nance, and should pre­sum­ably be grate­ful. So opined our own first Prime Min­is­ter, the re­put­ed "Fa­ther of the Na­tion" and "child of his time." He once vac­u­ous­ly ra­tio­nalised that what's good enough for Britain is good enough for us. There is the view that in ne­go­ti­at­ing the for­mat of our Con­sti­tu­tion, we were con­fronting the demons of eth­nic an­tipathies bub­bling be­low the sur­face, fu­elled in part by politi­cians and sundry etho­cen­trists who, as the po­et sur­mised, were "lick­ing their chops" at the prospect of hav­ing their turn in "the mad scrab­ble at the pub­lic troughs for scraps of favour," and I might add for selves, friends and fam­i­ly.

I dare haz­ard the guess that the framers of our post-in­de­pen­dence Con­sti­tu­tion did not take in­to ac­count those la­cu­nae in our Con­sti­tu­tion, ad­um­brat­ed against the back­ground of our pe­cu­liar so­cial and po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties, which al­lowed and per­haps fa­cil­i­tat­ed the emer­gence of an "im­pe­r­i­al pres­i­den­cy," which "looks like a duck, walks like duck and quacks like a duck." I don't wish to go in­to per­son­al­i­ties, but Dr Williams was able to clev­er­ly and heed­less­ly nav­i­gate with­in the po­lit­i­cal pa­ra­me­ters. Oth­ers fol­lowed suit, how­ev­er clum­si­ly and to our ir­re­triev­able cost. The Wood­ing Con­sti­tu­tion Re­view Com­mis­sion was a cred­i­ble at­tempt to up­date the in­de­pen­dence Con­sti­tu­tion. In ret­ro­spect, it ap­pears not to have been in­tend­ed to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly as a then-by all ac­counts-ap­par­ent­ly para­noid Williams pub­licly ex­co­ri­at­ed the com­mis­sion­ers, deem­ing their pro­pos­als to be "a dag­ger to the heart of his po­lit­i­cal par­ty."

The com­mis­sion's ma­jor con­cern was "...po­ten­tial hege­mon­ic na­ture of po­lit­i­cal par­ties per­ceived to be eth­ni­cal­ly based." The pro­pos­als were de­signed to re­duce the con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er and make par­lia­men­tary com­po­si­tion re­flec­tive of and sen­si­tive to the range of elec­toral sup­port on the ground. The cor­ner­stone of the com­mis­sion's pro­pos­als, as I un­der­stand it, was a "ju­di­cious amal­gam" of the first-past the-post and pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion elec­toral sys­tems. In­ter­est­ing­ly, in Britain-the "moth­er of par­lia­ments"-it­self, there are some reser­va­tions re: cer­tain as­pects of both the first-past-the post and pro­por­tion­al sys­tems, but that's an­oth­er sto­ry.

There is the view that pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, in a pure or mod­i­fied form, could be the panacea for our po­lit­i­cal prob­lem in re­spect of the per­ceived first-past-the-post sys­tem be­ing un­able to pro­duce a rep­re­sen­ta­tive ad­min­is­tra­tion with the con­comi­tant le­git­i­ma­cy and "moral au­thor­i­ty" for gov­er­nance. On the oth­er hand, there is al­so the con­tend­ing no­tion that pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion spawns a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of eth­nic, cul­tur­al, re­li­gious and oth­er con­stituen­cies, which pro­vide the breed­ing ground for all sorts of com­bi­na­tions and per­mu­ta­tions of in­her­ent­ly flu­id coali­tions, there­by re­sult­ing in un­sta­ble "re­volv­ing-door gov­ern­ments."

Now, what per­spec­tive should there­fore in­form the pa­ra­me­ter of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form? Should a pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion ac­knowl­edge and re­flect the so­ci­etal fault­lines, as they are, and set up in­sti­tu­tions with the ma­chin­ery for man­ag­ing the en­su­ing ten­sions and con­flicts that could oth­er­wise arise and pos­si­bly tear the so­ci­ety apart? Al­ter­na­tive­ly, should one fo­cus on the larg­er vi­sion, there­by cre­at­ing in­sti­tu­tions that, while ac­knowl­edg­ing le­git­i­mate di­vi­sions, do not le­git­imise or in­sti­tu­tion­alise the di­vi­sive­ness and an­tipathies? Time alone will tell whether per­sis­tent and stri­dent in­ter­ven­tions will be the cat­a­lyst for in­formed and dis­pas­sion­ate dis­course on gen­uine con­sti­tu­tion­al mat­ters.

If such a pub­lic dis­cus­sion de­gen­er­ates in­to the usu­al mind­less clack and clat­ter of those with po­lit­i­cal ax­es to grind, hid­den agen­das to pur­sue or po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions to re­alise, then we can look for­ward to the ex­pect­ed spin­ning of con­sti­tu­tion­al top in mud. As far back as 2008, Pro­fes­sor Sel­wyn Ryan, in an Ex­press col­umn, con­tend­ed, in­ter alia, that "Trinidad and To­ba­go in fact al­ready has an 'ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­cy' which mas­quer­ades as if it were an ex­pres­sion of the West­min­ster mod­el with all its as­sump­tions about min­is­te­r­i­al ac­count­abil­i­ty and ul­ti­mate ac­count­abil­i­ty to Par­lia­ment." Iron­i­cal­ly, our first Prime Min­is­ter, who could elo­quent­ly "talk the talk" where democ­ra­cy was con­cerned, was ap­par­ent­ly un­able to "walk the talk," and to put it in a nut­shell, was a prime rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the "quin­tes­sen­tial au­to­crat." We may, hope­ful­ly, have seen the last and great­est au­to­crat. Or have we?