I shall get to the sub­ject of the head­line in due course. I just need to say at the out­set of this re­view of the re­port of the Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mit­tee that I am ir­rev­o­ca­bly of the view that on­ly a fun­da­men­tal shift away from the ac­cept­ed and prac­ticed forms of au­thor­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment struc­tures—de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, so­cial­ist-com­mu­nist, dic­ta­to­r­i­al, et al—will free this coun­try from en­thral­ment by a po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic oli­garchy.

Such a cap­ture of a state and its peo­ple is not a fea­ture pe­cu­liar to T&T, it is eas­i­ly por­trayed around the world, and the con­se­quences are very ap­par­ent in any crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of gov­ern­ment to per­ceive how the ma­jor­i­ty of the gov­erned is struc­tured in­to un­der­de­vel­op­ment, pover­ty, and the dom­i­na­tion of a po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic elite.

In ef­fect, po­lit­i­cal democ­ra­cy amounts to a 30-sec­ond bal­lot­ing ex­er­cise. There­after, the lead­er­ship and his/her oli­garchy are em­pow­ered to do as they please in the in­ter­est of the sta­tus quo, ie, an eco­nom­ic class that ex­erts pow­er over the elect­ed gov­ern­ment.

In the process, the mass­es who elect the gov­ern­ments to of­fice are the mere wa­ter car­ri­ers. The com­mu­nist/so­cial­ist sys­tems as best rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sia and Chi­na op­er­ate with on­ly a shade of be­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive but are in ef­fect op­pres­sive regimes that cre­ate a dem­a­gog­ic leader and a cadre of oli­garchs who do his/her bid­ding with­out ques­tion.

My con­tention is that a con­sti­tu­tion where it ex­ists and the ex­er­cise of pow­er (which, as Mao Ze­dong says, “comes from the bar­rel of a gun”) pro­vid­ed for un­der the le­gal struc­tures de­ter­mine in large mea­sure the na­ture of the so­ci­ety, in­clu­sive of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of eco­nom­ic, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal pow­er.

The sta­tis­tics and ex­am­ples re­lat­ing to coun­tries, economies, and so­ci­eties that are gov­erned by con­sti­tu­tions and/or by the gun abound and are eas­i­ly sourced on­line.

In T&T, it’s the self-pro­claimed “one per cent” who is al­lowed con­trol by the po­lit­i­cal regime, which op­er­ates un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

In the USA and Eu­rope, the main pro­po­nents of po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and eco­nom­ic democ­ra­cy guar­an­teed in a con­sti­tu­tion, the da­ta show that con­trol of 30 to 40 per cent of the re­sources of the econ­o­my is in the do­main of a small mi­nor­i­ty class.

At the broad­er lev­el, ten per cent of the eco­nom­ic elite has up to 80 per cent of the rich­es of the coun­try and so­ci­ety un­der its own­er­ship. So it’s against such a back­ground that I ex­am­ine any at­tempt at con­sti­tu­tion re­form—trans­for­ma­tion be­ing a very dif­fer­ent ex­er­cise com­pared to the man­date giv­en to the Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mit­tee.

In gen­er­al, in a num­ber of in­stances, the com­mit­tee at­tempts a de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of pow­er away from the Prime Min­is­ter and the po­lit­i­cal elite. In the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pow­er as ad­vo­cat­ed, the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic will gain ad­di­tion­al and a larg­er de­gree of in­de­pen­dent pow­ers; the Speak­er of the House in par­tic­u­lar will be­come an in­de­pen­dent, and so too will the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate.

Bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions to the Chief Jus­tice will be in­de­pen­dent of the of­fice of the AG. There is al­so the ad­vo­ca­cy in the com­mit­tee’s re­port to es­tab­lish the Sen­ate through a par­tial sys­tem of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

How­ev­er, out­side of an at­tempt to have elect­ed par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives to be ac­count­able to the peo­ple through the sys­tem of re­call by a con­stituen­cy of vot­ers, the com­mit­tee does not en­ter the field of mean­ing­ful and tan­gi­ble pow­er-shar­ing with the elec­torate, which re­mains mar­gin­alised in ser­vice of an elect­ed gov­ern­ment.

The good news re­lat­ing to the prospect of mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion by the peo­ple in the gov­er­nance of the State is found in the com­mit­tee’s sub­mis­sion of a set of pro­pos­als in what is termed an Eco­nom­ic, So­cial and Cul­tur­al Rights bill. It’s some­thing akin to the Bill of Rights in the USA Con­sti­tu­tion.

“The Bill of Rights was added to the (USA) Con­sti­tu­tion be­cause of be­liefs that an enu­mer­at­ed list of in­di­vid­ual rights and free­doms was re­quired to pro­tect against gov­ern­ment over­reach.”

The Com­mit­tee’s Bill of Rights is quite com­pre­hen­sive in its con­cep­tion of the rights of in­di­vid­u­als and groups of cit­i­zens, and it touch­es on the so­cial, com­mu­ni­ty, eth­nic, and so­cial groups, their cul­tur­al forms of ex­pres­sion, their le­gal rights, those of cit­i­zen­ship, the rights of To­ba­go, health care rights, gen­der, and the rights to over­come sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion. No­tice­ably ab­sent though is the right to sex­u­al self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Very im­por­tant­ly, the rights and recog­ni­tion of our First Peo­ples and the rights of work­ers pro­tect­ed by trade unions are in­clud­ed in the bill. The com­mis­sion (which in­cludes a num­ber of dis­tin­guished cit­i­zens who I am cer­tain mean well) should be high­ly com­mend­ed for at­tempt­ing such a ven­ture in seek­ing to es­tab­lish ar­eas of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in a high­ly seg­ment­ed and strat­i­fied so­ci­ety.

The is­sue, I ar­gue, is the need to in­sti­tute the trans­for­ma­tion­al changes as ad­vo­cat­ed in the Bill of Rights in­to the le­gal struc­ture of the Con­sti­tu­tion to en­sure the re­al­i­sa­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the rights ad­vo­cat­ed.

As to the in­tent of the Gov­ern­ment to pro­mote even change, com­pared to trans­for­ma­tion, the his­to­ry of at­tempts at con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form by this and pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments in­di­cates quite clear­ly that there was and con­tin­ues to be no se­ri­ous in­di­ca­tion of a gov­ern­ment seek­ing to bring about what it says are its ob­jec­tives.

To be con­tin­ued. 

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor.