For the 13th Republican Parliament, the PNM opted to retain the Rowley contradiction of the Eric Williams doctrine on defeated candidates being appointed parliamentarians.
This was one of Dr Rowley’s signature departures from the Williams doctrine of no defeated candidates as senators, which had been upheld by George Chambers and Patrick Manning.
The Williams doctrine was outlined one week after the 1976 general election, on Monday, September 20, 1976, at a public meeting, by Williams himself at the corner of Piccadilly Street and Town Council Street in Port-of-Spain, as follows:
“The electorate has spoken. I am absolutely convinced that it will be wrong for any party or for the PNM to take a candidate who was defeated at the polls and put him in the Senate.” (Guardian, September 21, 1976, lead story by Errol Pilgrim).
The Williams doctrine on defeated candidates, in general, and defeated PNM candidates in particular, being appointed as senators after a general election was thus born.
This doctrine was deliberately contradicted by then leader of the Opposition, Basdeo Panday, who led the ULF, to appoint a defeated candidate as a senator, namely prominent attorney Allan Alexander, who was the defeated ULF candidate in Point Fortin.
The Panday doctrine was that defeated candidates were both eligible and appointable as senators.
The Williams and Panday doctrines coexisted as polar opposites between 1976 and 2015.
After Panday formed the UNC in 1989, he continued to recommend defeated candidates as senators in every Parliament, whether in government or in opposition. On the other hand, Patrick Manning refrained from doing so out of respect for the Williams doctrine.
Indeed, Panday extended it to the Speaker’s chair when he nominated defeated UNC candidates Hector Mc Clean (1995) and Dr Rupert Griffith (2001) to assume the office of Speaker.
All of this was part of Panday’s creation of a political model for the ULF/UNC to openly disrupt and undermine the Williams model of the PNM state and traditions.
This came to a head in 2000-2001 when then president ANR Robinson attempted to impose the Williams doctrine on Panday by refusing his advice to appoint seven defeated UNC candidates as senators. The standoff lasted for 55 days before Robinson relented, and Panday won.
In September 2015, the new Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley, abandoned the Williams doctrine outright and for the first time recommended defeated PNM candidates as senators.
Clarence Rambharat (defeated in Mayaro) and Avinash Singh (defeated in Caroni Central) were appointed Minister of Agriculture and Parliamentary Secretary in that ministry, respectively, together with Senators Sara Budhu (defeated in Caroni East) and Hafeez Ali (defeated in Barataria-San Juan).
This trend was again continued by Rowley after the August 2020 general election when he recommended Clarence Rambharat (defeated in Chaguanas East) as Minister of Agriculture and Renuka Sagramsingh-Sooklal (defeated in St Augustine) as Minister in the Ministry of Legal Affairs.
The Williams doctrine of 1976 emerged from a lobby for the appointment of Basil Pitt as a senator after he had been defeated in Tobago West by Dr Winston Murray of the DAC.
Indeed, the Sunday Guardian editorial of September 19, 1976, said, in part, as follows:
“We do not know what the policy of the Government is with regard to the nomination of valuable but defeated candidates to the Senate, but if such a policy can accommodate the selection of Mr Pitt, we should certainly be among those who would support such a decision.”
Dr Williams delivered his address on the following evening in which he outlined his rejection of the idea of appointing defeated candidates as parliamentarians.
In its editorial on Wednesday, September 22, 1976, the Guardian changed its initial position as follows:
“Dr Williams has a point; a defeated candidate should not be brought to Parliament by the back door. But there is little that he or the President, who makes all appointments, could do, as there is no bar to Mr Allan Alexander becoming an Opposition Senator. The President could try to dissuade the Opposition but the political wishes of the Opposition are paramount in this matter.”
Between 1976 and 2015, the Williams doctrine prevailed in the PNM until the Rowley contradiction. Kamla Persad-Bissessar introduced a corollary to the Panday doctrine in 2015 when she included defeated candidates of other parties in coalition with the UNC being appointed Senators (Rodger Samuel 2015 and Phillip Alexander 2025) together with defeated UNC candidates.
New Leader of the Opposition, Pennelope Beckles, adopted the Rowley contradiction of Eric Williams and widened the Persad-Bissessar corollary by appointing Faris Al-Rawi and Foster Cummings (defeated PNM candidates) together with former PDP THA candidate, Melanie Roberts-Radgman, as senators to the exclusion of any other PNM Tobago member.
Prof Hamid Ghany is a Professor of Constitutional Affairs and Parliamentary Studies at The University of the West Indies (UWI). He was also appointed an Honorary Professor of The UWI upon his retirement in October 2021. He continues his research and publications and also does some teaching at The UWI.