Fifty years ago yes­ter­day, Dr Er­ic Williams pressed the re­set but­ton on his pre­mier­ship and his lead­er­ship of the PNM when he re­turned to the ad­journed 15th An­nu­al Con­ven­tion of the PNM at the Ch­aguara­mas Con­ven­tion Cen­tre af­ter re­con­sid­er­ing his de­ci­sion to step down.

Up­on his re­turn to the Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, he said there were two pledges that he would give. The first was the hold­ing of the gen­er­al elec­tion as soon as pos­si­ble and the sec­ond was the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Wood­ing Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion.

How­ev­er, 67 days be­fore, on Sep­tem­ber 28, he opened his an­nu­al con­ven­tion ad­dress with the fol­low­ing words:

“As the mem­bers of the par­ty are aware, my term of of­fice as po­lit­i­cal leader comes to an end with this An­nu­al Con­ven­tion, and I have tak­en no steps to seek re-elec­tion. I owe it, there­fore, to this Con­ven­tion and the par­ty as a whole, to in­di­cate at least some of the fac­tors which I have tak­en in­to ac­count in reach­ing my de­ci­sion. (Ad­dress by the Po­lit­i­cal Leader, 15th An­nu­al Con­ven­tion, Print­ed by PNM-PC, p 1)

One of his prophet­ic fears was ex­pressed as fol­lows:

“It is now clear be­yond any pos­si­bil­i­ty of doubt that Caribbean in­te­gra­tion will not be achieved in the fore­see­able fu­ture and that the re­al­i­ty is con­tin­ued Caribbean dis­uni­ty and even per­haps the reaf­fir­ma­tion of colo­nial­ism.” (p 2)

Williams had writ­ten to Her Majesty Queen Eliz­a­beth II mere days be­fore the Con­ven­tion to ad­vise her of his in­ten­tion to step down by not seek­ing re-elec­tion to the lead­er­ship of the PNM. He al­so in­di­cat­ed in his let­ter that he want­ed to re­sign his mem­ber­ship of Her Majesty’s Privy Coun­cil and he want­ed to re­turn the Com­pan­ion of Ho­n­our (CH) award that had been award­ed to him some years be­fore.

The Con­ven­tion was dis­mayed by Williams’ an­nounce­ment and it was ad­journed to a date to be fixed. In the in­ter­im, the PNM opened nom­i­na­tions for the post of po­lit­i­cal leader and Karl Hud­son-Phillips and Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed were the two nom­i­nees.

On De­cem­ber 2, the re­con­vened con­ven­tion con­sid­ered a “Don’t Go” res­o­lu­tion that called for Williams to stay. It was car­ried by 348 votes in favour to 61 votes against and 14 ab­sten­tions among the del­e­gates. A del­e­ga­tion led by Daniel Reid from the St Ann’s con­stituen­cy was dis­patched to car­ry the news to Dr Williams. He changed his mind and re­turned to the Con­ven­tion to in­di­cate that he was stay­ing. The elec­tion of a new po­lit­i­cal leader was dis­con­tin­ued as both Hud­son-Phillips and Mo­hammed with­drew their nom­i­na­tions. His­to­ry was al­tered in the process.

In ad­di­tion to his two pledges, he laid down five con­di­tions “in the na­tion­al in­ter­est” for his re­turn. They were (i) gen­er­al elec­tions un­der a new con­sti­tu­tion, (ii) rec­om­men­da­tions of the Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion be dis­cussed ex­ten­sive­ly, (iii) full con­sid­er­a­tion of any con­sen­sus from those dis­cus­sions, (iv) low­er­ing the vot­ing age to 18, and (v) the hold­ing of gen­er­al elec­tions once the “time el­e­ment” was clear­er.

Things did not pan out in a man­ner that was con­sis­tent with his as­pi­ra­tions. On Jan­u­ary 22, 1974, the Wood­ing Com­mis­sion pre­sent­ed its re­port to the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al to­geth­er with a Mi­nor­i­ty Re­port by Mi­tra Sinanan, QC.

Williams laid the two re­ports in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on De­cem­ber 14, 1974, and pro­ceed­ed to speak on them for eight hours over two days (De­cem­ber 14 and 17, 1974). He dis­agreed with three of the key pro­pos­als con­tained in the ma­jor­i­ty re­port, name­ly (i) he re­ject­ed the pro­pos­al for pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, (ii) he re­ject­ed the abo­li­tion of the Sen­ate, (iii) he dis­agreed with the in­clu­sion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors in the com­po­si­tion of the Elec­toral Col­lege to choose the pres­i­dent.

The new re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion was ap­proved in March 1976, T&T be­came a re­pub­lic on Au­gust 1, 1976, gen­er­al elec­tion was held on Sep­tem­ber 13, and the new re­pub­li­can Par­lia­ment con­vened on Sep­tem­ber 24 which was named Re­pub­lic Day and de­clared as a pub­lic hol­i­day.

Po­lit­i­cal­ly, Williams had im­ple­ment­ed the signed and un­dat­ed let­ter of res­ig­na­tion pol­i­cy as a con­di­tion for PNM can­di­dates to stand for elec­tion which ef­fec­tive­ly saw Karl Hud­son-Phillips re­fus­ing to sign it and he stepped aside from seek­ing to stand as a PNM can­di­date.

Williams had al­so em­barked on an ag­gres­sive en­er­gy pol­i­cy for the coun­try in the af­ter­math of the Yom Kip­pur War that start­ed on Oc­to­ber 6, 1973, dur­ing his hia­tus and the price of oil sky­rock­et­ed on the world mar­ket.

Many peo­ple be­lieve that it was world en­er­gy prices that brought Williams back and made him press the re­set but­ton. What would T&T have been like if ei­ther Karl or Ka­mal had tak­en over in 1973?  

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.