Prof Hamid Ghany

The Re­port of the Na­tion­al Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form (NAC­CR) made a clear rec­om­men­da­tion to re­tain the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem. There is one com­ment that they made that re­quires some fur­ther dis­cus­sion be­cause it goes to the heart of their philo­soph­i­cal be­liefs in the fol­low­ing para­graph: “4.72 … Adopt­ing an Amer­i­can-style ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­cy would ac­tu­al­ly re­sult in an even greater con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er, which is clear­ly not what the pub­lic wants. In ad­di­tion, the sys­tem where the Ex­ec­u­tive Pres­i­dent is elect­ed sep­a­rate­ly from the leg­is­la­ture al­so means that there will be mul­ti­ple elec­tions and/or more com­pli­cat­ed vot­ing pro­ce­dures to pro­duce a gov­ern­ment.”

The Amer­i­can ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­cy mod­el does not “re­sult in an even greater con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er” in the head of gov­ern­ment than the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem. The British Prime Min­is­ter is more pow­er­ful than the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent.

The re­cent trans­fer of pow­er in Britain fol­low­ing the Ju­ly 4 gen­er­al elec­tion showed the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence. Sir Keir Starmer was in­vit­ed to form a gov­ern­ment on Ju­ly 5 by King Charles III; he formed the Cab­i­net on the same day and held his first Cab­i­net meet­ing on Ju­ly 6.

That does not hap­pen in the USA be­cause the Pres­i­dent is not de­pen­dent on a ma­jor­i­ty in Con­gress to hold of­fice. The pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is held on the first Tues­day fol­low­ing the first Mon­day in No­vem­ber in a leap year, and In­au­gu­ra­tion Day is on 2oth of Jan­u­ary fol­low­ing.

Pres­i­dents have no guar­an­tee that their Cab­i­net will be con­firmed by the Sen­ate. The British Prime Min­is­ter gets who­ev­er the British Prime Min­is­ter wants in his/her Cab­i­net im­me­di­ate­ly up­on re­quest, as long as these peo­ple are mem­bers of the House of Com­mons or the House of Lords.

The Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent has to nom­i­nate peo­ple who are not mem­bers of Con­gress for des­ig­nat­ed Cab­i­net po­si­tions who have to be vet­ted by the US Sen­ate be­fore vot­ing to de­cide their ap­point­ment as Cab­i­net Sec­re­taries. The fate of the Pres­i­dent’s nom­i­nees can range from ap­proval to with­draw­al to out­right re­jec­tion.

In 1993, Zoe Baird, the nom­i­nee of Pres­i­dent-elect Bill Clin­ton to be­come At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, was with­drawn af­ter it emerged that she had em­ployed il­le­gal im­mi­grants. Clin­ton then nom­i­nat­ed Mi­a­mi-Dade State At­tor­ney Janet Reno, and she was con­firmed as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

In 1989, Pres­i­dent-elect George H W Bush nom­i­nat­ed for­mer Texas sen­a­tor John Tow­er to be­come De­fence Sec­re­tary. Af­ter a tu­mul­tuous con­gres­sion­al hear­ing where his al­co­hol con­sump­tion was ques­tioned, the Sen­ate vot­ed 53-47 to re­ject his nom­i­na­tion. Pres­i­dent George H W Bush then nom­i­nat­ed Wyoming Con­gress­man Dick Ch­eney to be­come De­fence Sec­re­tary, and he was con­firmed and nat­u­ral­ly re­signed his seat in the Con­gress as a re­sult.

The ap­point­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,200 po­si­tions in the Ex­ec­u­tive Branch of gov­ern­ment re­quires the US Pres­i­dent to nom­i­nate and the Sen­ate to rat­i­fy these nom­i­na­tions be­fore the in­di­vid­u­als can take up their po­si­tions. This could work for state en­ter­pris­es.

The British Prime Min­is­ter does not have to en­dure such scruti­ny, and nei­ther does our Prime Min­is­ter. How­ev­er, the NAC­CR thinks that the Amer­i­can ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­cy mod­el has more pow­er than our head of gov­ern­ment.

The fun­da­men­tal ob­jec­tion, in the past, to the ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­cy mod­el has not been any be­lief that the US Pres­i­dent has more pow­er than a Com­mon­wealth Caribbean Prime Min­is­ter, but rather the com­para­tor that has been used has been the caudil­lo im­age of pres­i­den­cies in Latin Amer­i­ca. Our po­lit­i­cal sys­tem has grown out of colo­nial im­i­ta­tion of the for­mer im­pe­r­i­al pow­er.

The trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty that the NAC­CR is search­ing for will come more ef­fi­cient­ly from an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­tial mod­el where there will no longer be dual sources of pow­er be­tween a Pres­i­dent who is qua­si-cer­e­mo­ni­al (as op­posed to cer­e­mo­ni­al, which our Pres­i­dent is not) and a Prime Min­is­ter whose ad­vice has to be ten­dered to the Pres­i­dent on the premise that the Pres­i­dent is ex­pect­ed to com­ply.

Re­mov­ing the dual-source el­e­ment of ex­ec­u­tive pow­er in our Con­sti­tu­tion and em­brac­ing a mod­i­fied sin­gle-source US-style pres­i­den­tial mod­el will bring a lev­el of re­al trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty that has been alien to our con­sti­tu­tion­al evo­lu­tion un­der the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem.

The Pres­i­dent and the Prime Min­is­ter can be at log­ger­heads in our sys­tem now, which is un­healthy, but we do not have cen­turies of con­ven­tions to guar­an­tee sta­bil­i­ty. The di­vi­sive po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of “who doh like it could get to hell out of here” that has evolved since in­de­pen­dence can on­ly be chal­lenged if Par­lia­ment can no longer be dom­i­nat­ed by the Ex­ec­u­tive.

The NAC­CR is op­posed to sep­a­rate elec­tions for the Ex­ec­u­tive and for Par­lia­ment. How­ev­er, such sep­a­rate elec­tions would ac­tu­al­ly re­move the curse of en­forced sin­gle-par­ty vot­ing, which may per­mit con­sen­su­al gov­ern­ment as op­posed to the hege­mon­ic “win­ner take all” ver­sion we have now. 

Dr Hamid Ghany is 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.