Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

The nar­row par­ty po­lit­i­cal dis­po­si­tions and ac­tions con­sis­tent­ly dis­played in the gov­er­nance of T&T are once again lead­ing to dead-end po­lit­i­cal bat­tles in­side and out­side of the Par­lia­ment. In­deed, many of those nar­row, po­lit­i­cal bat­tles reach up to a num­ber of the high­est of­fices in the Gov­ern­ment and the State.

In the in­stance of Her Ex­cel­len­cy Chris­tine C. Kan­ga­loo ORTT, Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (elect­ed to of­fice by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment), the con­tention is over her ap­point­ment of Jacque­line Wil­son as Chair­man of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion. An­oth­er po­lit­i­cal con­test of the pe­ri­od is re­lat­ed to the se­lec­tion and func­tion­ing of the Hon. Jagdeo Singh, MP, as Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment

What we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in the present is the fall­out from the ex­er­cise of con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er in the al­leged place­ment of po­lit­i­cal­ly bi­ased in­di­vid­u­als to act in crit­i­cal of­fices, not in the in­ter­est of the whole, but rather ac­cord­ing to the po­lit­i­cal re­quire­ments and de­mands of the par­ty/gov­ern­ment, which placed them strate­gi­cal­ly there to serve nar­row par­ti­san needs.

That is not an orig­i­nal state­ment of this colum­nist; it’s the charge made by the par­ties/gov­ern­ment/op­po­si­tion them­selves over decades of fling­ing ac­cu­sa­tions at each oth­er in­side and out­side of the Par­lia­ment, against per­sons who have been put in­to these crit­i­cal of­fices of the State by gov­ern­ments and op­po­si­tion par­ties.

As can be ex­pect­ed, the po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­dists, both those in­side and out­side the Par­lia­ment, and the hired “mind ben­ders”, who have been cre­at­ed and ap­point­ed to func­tion in the man­ner they do, op­er­ate as po­lit­i­cal hit­men and women.

The work agen­da of such pro­pa­gan­dists is to seek to de­stroy com­plete­ly the char­ac­ter, and in in­stances, the life’s work of in­di­vid­u­als placed in po­si­tions of pow­er by gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion par­ties. As in­di­cat­ed above, the ap­point­ment by Her Ex­cel­len­cy, Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of T&T, Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo of Jacque­line Wil­son as chair­man of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion, and the on­go­ing at­tack on the Gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed House Speak­er, Jagdeo Singh, by the Op­po­si­tion PNM, are cur­rent ex­am­ples of the pow­er wran­gle cre­at­ed by the Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion.

Al­most be­fore Wil­son could leave Pres­i­dent’s House with her cre­den­tials for the job, there ap­peared sav­age at­tempts to de­stroy her cred­i­bil­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ty to act fair­ly in her new post – she is PNM-bi­ased and will not func­tion in­de­pen­dent­ly, is the charge.

From the day of his elec­tion, Jagdeo Singh, an ex­pe­ri­enced at­tor­ney, has had se­ri­ous doubts and in­deed al­le­ga­tions cast over his abil­i­ty to func­tion in a pro­fes­sion­al and just man­ner as House Speak­er by the PNM pro­pa­gan­dists. In the present, the con­test is over his sup­port of a pre­vi­ous client of his when he was in prac­tice.

I sub­mit, though, that the above and oth­er in­stances of the charges of bias in the ap­point­ment of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-de­ter­mined of­fi­cers, and crit­i­cism over how they have func­tioned in the po­si­tions, are not the re­al is­sue. What is, is the re­al­i­ty that the pro­vi­sions made in the Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion for their ap­point­ments by the Gov­ern­ment in of­fice, make it all but im­pos­si­ble for those giv­en State jobs, to be per­ceived as func­tion­ing in a just man­ner in the in­ter­est of the na­tion. In­stead, be­cause of the na­ture and ba­sis of the ap­point­ments, i.e., by the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion, which placed them there, they can­not but be per­ceived, on the ap­pro­pri­ate oc­ca­sions, to be sup­port­ers of their bene­fac­tors.

Ef­fec­tive­ly, then, the par­ties, the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion, in their crit­i­cisms of each oth­er, are say­ing that the Con­sti­tu­tion is wrong to hand pow­er to the two in­sti­tu­tions to make the ap­point­ments for crit­i­cal of­fi­cers of the State.

The con­tes­tants, how­ev­er, do not go be­yond the charged, self-serv­ing vin­dic­tive­ness of the in­di­vid­u­als in pow­er who make the de­ci­sions on ap­point­ments. They do not see (or refuse to) that the ob­vi­ous fault lines lie in the fact that it is the Con­sti­tu­tion which gives al­most com­plete pow­er to the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to be bi­ased. In­deed, the pro­tag­o­nists refuse to recog­nise that, ac­cord­ing to their own claims, cer­tain high con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice hold­ers can­not but be bi­ased; and that is a claim made not by this writer and oth­ers who analyse the sit­u­a­tion in a sim­i­lar man­ner, but by them­selves.

The cen­tral point is that it must be recog­nised by the pop­u­la­tion that a Gov­ern­ment in of­fice will le­git­i­mate­ly hire its par­ty mem­bers as min­is­ters, and this in ac­cor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion. Be­yond those, and in ac­cor­dance with the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions, gov­ern­ments in of­fice will al­so stack of­fices, which are ex­pect­ed to op­er­ate in the wider in­ter­ests of the pop­u­la­tion, with those who are de­vot­ed sup­port­ers of their par­ties, fi­nanciers in cer­tain in­stances, and that pow­er is hand­ed out by the Con­sti­tu­tion for the Gov­ern­ment to do so.

The easy con­clu­sion is that the prob­lems lie with­in the Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion.

I shall con­tin­ue.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host, and News Di­rec­tor at TTT; pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad; cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press; grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.