So­ci­ety needs to go be­yond the ob­vi­ous call of Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo for col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion in pass­ing an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion. A more sig­nif­i­cant piece of ad­vice giv­en by the Pres­i­dent cen­ters around hav­ing Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans en­gaged as full-time law­mak­ers with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to con­ceive of and to de­bate leg­is­la­tion with a de­vel­op­men­tal pur­pose for the na­tion, and to do so be­yond nar­row par­ty and con­stituen­cy in­ter­ests.

As struc­tured, our Par­lia­ment is about a Gov­ern­ment’s push for the pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion, and as the ven­er­a­ble Mr Bas­deo Pan­day has re­it­er­at­ed, the busi­ness of the Op­po­si­tion is not to make the gov­ern­ment look good.

This ap­proach to par­lia­men­tary re­spon­si­bil­i­ties has cre­at­ed a Par­lia­ment of a gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ing to pass leg­is­la­tion, and the Op­po­si­tion find­ing ways to op­pose what­ev­er is put for­ward. And this holds even when the ab­sur­di­ty emerges, ie, the Op­po­si­tion cries shame and damna­tion on bills and laws that even the Op­po­si­tion it­self once brought to the cham­ber.

One of the Pres­i­dent’s rec­om­men­da­tions has to do with the es­tab­lish­ment of a Pub­lic Bill Com­mit­tee “to un­der­take more in-depth stud­ies of pro­posed leg­is­la­tion.” What such op­er­a­tional work­ings of the Par­lia­ment can do is to have MPs con­tem­plate, de­bate, dis­cuss and pro­duce qual­i­ty laws, and this is away from the bright lights where they play them­selves.

“That we have ad­vanced fur­ther in cre­at­ing a Par­lia­ment that col­lab­o­rates, leg­is­lates and acts bold­ly in es­sen­tial ar­eas of our na­tion­al life,” is the hope of Her Ex­cel­len­cy Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo for the evo­lu­tion of the in­sti­tu­tion. Whether or not Her Ex­cel­len­cy ac­knowl­edges it, she is ad­vo­cat­ing for a change in the par­ty po­lit­i­cal cul­ture with its out-work­ings in the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment.

How Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans op­er­ate and be­have are about fronting for their po­lit­i­cal par­ties, not nec­es­sar­i­ly about the na­tion­al in­ter­est. Trinidad and To­ba­go, as a colony of Britain, in­her­it­ed the West­min­ster sys­tem of par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy, and notwith­stand­ing mi­nor ad­just­ments over the long pe­ri­od reach­ing back in­to the colo­nial Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil, there has been lit­tle ef­fort to fash­ion a par­lia­men­tary sys­tem to match the needs of an in­de­pen­dent Trinidad and To­ba­go.

All of the sev­er­al of­fer­ings of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form con­ceived of by a few of our best po­lit­i­cal and le­gal minds have been ig­nored, lodged in an­tiq­ui­ty.

If many of those op­tions had been tak­en out­side of par­ty po­lit­i­cal de­sires, a na­tion­al Par­lia­ment that has at its core the in­ter­est of the na­tion, could have brought so­ci­ety clos­er to hav­ing what can be con­sid­ered a na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion con­struct­ed in the in­ter­est of pur­su­ing mean­ing­ful in­de­pen­dence.

Con­tained in the Pres­i­dent’s ad­vo­ca­cy is a hy­brid of work-at-home and of­fice op­tions; greater ef­forts in the in­ter­est of the dis­abled; se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion on the re­al­i­ty of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence; the steel­pan be­ing made the na­tion­al in­stru­ment —al­though we can­not un­der­stand why this still out­stand­ing. On­ly a mis­guid­ed Par­lia­ment and na­tion can ac­count for such a de­fi­cien­cy: Imag­ine the Unit­ed Na­tions has gone ahead of the cre­ators of the steel­pan.

The hon­est an­swer to the mus­ings of Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo is: we have not evolved as a na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, in­ter­est­ed in what is best for the wel­fare of the na­tion. We have to progress be­yond what was hand­ed down at Marl­bor­ough House.