Win­ford James

The crash of the PDP (Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots) in of­fice on De­cem­ber 1 was not en­tire­ly un­ex­pect­ed. Six­teen (16) out of a pos­si­ble sev­en­teen (17) PDP As­sem­bly­men and Coun­cil­lors–Wat­son Duke was the odd man out–de­clared in a joint press re­lease that they were there­by re­sign­ing from the PDP and–not but–that they would ‘con­tin­ue to serve the peo­ple of To­ba­go’ as in­de­pen­dent mem­bers of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

Fur­ther, Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Faith B Yis­rael stat­ed that she was giv­ing Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine her full sup­port, and all the oth­er as­sem­bly­men said they were giv­ing Au­gus­tine and Yis­rael their full sup­port.

It was a com­plete and de­fin­i­tive sev­er­ing of po­lit­i­cal ties with Duke, who would ad­mit that he was sur­prised by the move, which he la­belled ‘cow­ard­ly’, even though he had of­ten called on them to re­sign be­fore they ac­tu­al­ly did.

But a few weeks be­fore the mo­men­tous act, he had com­mit­ted his own game-chang­ing acts, in­clud­ing the fol­low­ing:

Pub­lic blast­ing Au­gus­tine for not do­ing enough to fi­nan­cial­ly bail a Rox­bor­ough cul­tur­al group out of the dol­drums they had fall­en in­to in Amer­i­ca.

Fir­ing his three To­ba­go deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers–Au­gus­tine, Yis­rael, and Ali­cia Roberts-Pat­ter­son.

Re­sign­ing from the po­si­tion of Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary and mov­ing to the side of the Op­po­si­tion in the House from where he lam­bast­ed his erst­while po­lit­i­cal col­leagues.

Telling every­one that he owned the PDP.

Call­ing on the 16 to re­sign from the PDP.

On the eve of the elec­tions last De­cem­ber (just a year ago), he had, in Rox­bor­ough and at Rovanel’s guest house, an­nounced that Au­gus­tine would be Chief Sec­re­tary and he Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary if the PDP were to win. He knew that the ‘peo­ple of To­ba­go’ did not want him as Chief and he sensed that the PDP would have lost the elec­tions had he been pre­sent­ed to the peo­ple as such. But not long af­ter the vic­to­ry, it be­came clear­er and clear­er that he want­ed the cov­et­ed post and was pre­pared to wrest it from Far­ley dur­ing of­fice. Three of the bases of his po­si­tion were: 1) Far­ley was pub­licly dis­re­spect­ing him; 2) Far­ley and his ex­ec­u­tive had aban­doned the PDP man­date; and 3) Far­ley was not al­low­ing the par­ty to di­rect the poli­cies of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil.

In the process, he be­lit­tled the rest of his erst­while po­lit­i­cal col­leagues in the House. I sus­pect that the last straw for them was his au­to­crat­ic sham­ing de­c­la­ra­tion that he owned the par­ty.

Now if your po­lit­i­cal leader told every­body that he owned the par­ty that you helped to build and whose elec­toral suc­cess you know you con­tributed might­i­ly to, and he did this on the heels of un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly strip­ping the To­ba­go deputies of their of­fices, could you stay on? If you were to stay on, what is the democ­ra­cy you would hold on to?

The mass res­ig­na­tions send crit­i­cal mes­sages, but two are es­pe­cial­ly pow­er­ful. One is that all the as­sem­bly­men in the House have re­ject­ed Wat­son. (I in­clude the PNM ones since they are a pri­ori op­po­nents of the PDP, and their lead­er­ship, na­tion­al and To­bag­on­ian, are al­so on record as re­ject­ing him.) And the sec­ond is that the re­jec­tion of the self-mint­ed in­de­pen­dents in the House is now con­flat­ed with that of the elec­torate.

Wat­son now wants the in­de­pen­dents gone from the House. He has called up­on the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor to de­clare their seats va­cant and, ac­cord­ing­ly, for fresh elec­tions to be held. He thinks that there are both le­gal and eth­i­cal bases for his stance.

The le­gal ar­gu­ment is in essence that, in the ab­sence of au­thor­i­ty in ei­ther the THA Act or the As­sem­bly Stand­ing Or­ders (which do not recog­nise po­lit­i­cal par­ties), the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer should have re­course to the Stand­ing Or­ders of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (which do). But, as many com­men­ta­tors have point­ed out, there is noth­ing in THA leg­is­la­tion that au­tho­ris­es fresh elec­tions; and so the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer has no mo­ti­va­tion or le­gal ba­sis to in­voke the HoR Or­ders. In­deed, a prop­er read­ing of the THA Act strong­ly in­di­cates that pre­ma­ture fresh elec­tions are de­pen­dent on a vol­un­tary res­o­lu­tion by the House to dis­solve it­self.

The eth­i­cal ar­gu­ment is that, if you are elect­ed un­der the ban­ner of a par­ty, it is im­moral (or un­eth­i­cal) for you to leave that par­ty or change al­le­giance and stay elect­ed; the rea­son is that, from a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic point of view, the par­ty, not the in­di­vid­ual, is para­mount, be­cause of can­di­date de­pen­dence on its im­age and oth­er re­sources. The ar­gu­ment has mer­it if prac­tice and tra­di­tion have pro­duced be­hav­iours like res­ig­na­tion, as well as a body of thought and dis­course on the is­sue in our ju­ris­dic­tion. But that is clear­ly not the case.

In­deed, the de­vel­op­ment that has brought this mat­ter in­to fo­cus is the res­ig­na­tion from a par­ty not of a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual but of every­body ex­cept the po­lit­i­cal leader of that par­ty. It is as if the res­ig­na­tions were from the leader and not the par­ty!

And then there is the mat­ter of can­di­date re­sources and re­la­tion­ship with the con­stituen­cy, which some feel must count for some­thing. In­deed, the can­di­date is os­ten­si­bly the leader of the process by which a par­ty cre­ates mech­a­nisms of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the con­stituen­cies.

Ques­tions that arise that are per­ti­nent to our prac­tice of law and ethics in­clude the fol­low­ing:

Should we stick res­olute­ly to the prac­tice of mak­ing the po­lit­i­cal leader of a suc­cess­ful par­ty the chief ex­ec­u­tive in gov­ern­ment?

How do we treat in law with a mat­ter such as the one un­der ques­tion?

If nei­ther the par­ty nor their Ex­ec­u­tive in the House have es­tab­lished con­sul­ta­tive struc­tures in them­selves, should we use the law to force them to do so?

But as we move for­ward, it is clear the rift in the PDP can­not be healed.