Last week, I ex­plored as­pects of the lat­est it­er­a­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment)(To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment) Bill 2021. That process con­tin­ues to­day.

Sec­tion 15 of the bill seeks to amend sec­tion 120 of the Con­sti­tu­tion by en­larg­ing the size of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion from “two nor more than four oth­er mem­bers” be­sides the chair­man and the deputy chair­man to “four nor more than six oth­er mem­bers, two of whom shall or­di­nar­i­ly res­i­dent in To­ba­go.” These mem­bers who are to be or­di­nar­i­ly res­i­dent in To­ba­go are to be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Chief Sec­re­tary.

See­ing that these To­ba­go mem­bers are re­quired to be “or­di­nar­i­ly res­i­dent” in To­ba­go, one would imag­ine that the meet­ings of the PSC will be con­duct­ed by an ap­pro­pri­ate on­line plat­form giv­en the cur­rent COVID-in­spired re­forms for cor­po­rate and oth­er meet­ings, as hav­ing these mem­bers trav­el to Trinidad is go­ing to re­in­force the dom­i­nance of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment over the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions be­cause a sim­i­lar method­ol­o­gy of mem­ber­ship is con­tem­plat­ed for the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

Sec­tion 17 of the bill seeks to amend sec­tion 124 of the Con­sti­tu­tion to re­place “not more than four oth­er mem­bers” with words that read “six oth­er mem­bers, two of whom shall be or­di­nar­i­ly res­i­dent in To­ba­go.”

The same is­sues will arise with the TSC as with the PSC that will de­mand that on­line meet­ings be held and where phys­i­cal meet­ings are re­quired, it is like­ly that the To­ba­go mem­bers will have to trav­el to Trinidad as the seat of the Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion is lo­cat­ed in Port-of-Spain.

This is re­in­forced in sec­tion 18 of the bill by the fol­low­ing amend­ment to sec­tion 129 of the Con­sti­tu­tion:

“(2A) Notwith­stand­ing sub­sec­tion (2), where a Ser­vice Com­mis­sion meets, in the ex­er­cise of its pow­er in re­la­tion to a mat­ter in To­ba­go, the quo­rum shall in­clude at least one mem­ber ap­point­ed from To­ba­go.”

This amend­ment does not pro­vide any ex­clu­siv­i­ty for To­ba­go be­cause it se­cures a mi­nor­i­ty pres­ence for the con­sid­er­a­tion of mat­ters from To­ba­go with no guar­an­tee that the Trinidad-based ma­jor­i­ty will not make the fi­nal de­ci­sion in a man­ner that may un­der­mine the To­ba­go in­ter­est.

This is where na­tion­al in­ter­est meets To­ba­go in­ter­est and the for­mer will al­ways pre­vail de­spite the ef­forts of this bill to pro­vide To­ba­go with a right to its own self-de­ter­mi­na­tion. These pro­vi­sions on Ser­vice Com­mis­sions (the PSC and the TSC) do not in­clude the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion which was sub­stan­tial­ly al­tered by Act No 6 of 2006 to pro­vide par­lia­men­tary ap­proval for mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. There will be no To­ba­go in­put or re­quire­ment in­so­far as the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion is con­cerned.

If full in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go is be­ing con­tem­plat­ed, all of the pro­posed amend­ments that in­clude the ap­point­ment of peo­ple “or­di­nar­i­ly res­i­dent in To­ba­go” ought to be made sub­ject to a nom­i­na­tion process to be ap­proved by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

The process of pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion and par­lia­men­tary ap­proval has been ap­plied to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion which leads to overt scruti­ny of all nom­i­nees. Why can that method­ol­o­gy not be ap­plied to the PSC and the TSC for To­ba­go?

If the in­ten­tion is to grant full in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment to To­ba­go, then the re­forms ought to guar­an­tee To­ba­go the req­ui­site means by which to se­cure To­ba­go’s mem­ber­ship even if it will still be on a mi­nor­i­ty ba­sis that will be dom­i­nat­ed by Trinidad in the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

Per­haps the pro­pos­al that will cause dif­fi­cul­ty is in sec­tion 20 of the bill which seeks to cre­ate a new sec­tion 144 and 145 of the Con­sti­tu­tion by the cre­ation of a Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mit­tee.

It is pro­posed that the com­mit­tee will con­sist of two mem­bers ap­point­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter, two mem­bers ap­point­ed by the Chief Sec­re­tary and a chair­man who shall be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter and the Chief Sec­re­tary. No res­i­den­cy re­quire­ments are spec­i­fied.

This com­mit­tee is far too po­lit­i­cal and the pro­posed neu­tral­i­ty that the Pres­i­dent might bring by ap­point­ing a chair­man is no guar­an­tee of fair han­dling of the dis­pute. There must be a role for civ­il so­ci­ety in such a body, es­pe­cial­ly when po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences or sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torates in Port-of-Spain and Scar­bor­ough could tilt the mem­ber­ship one way or the oth­er. Civ­il so­ci­ety can bring a gen­uine third-par­ty bal­ance as op­posed to bias.