Prof Hamid Ghany

Last Thurs­day, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo, act­ing on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter, is­sued a procla­ma­tion pro­rogu­ing the First Ses­sion of the Thir­teenth Par­lia­ment at mid­night last Fri­day. The Sec­ond Ses­sion has been pro­claimed, on the ad­vice of the Cab­i­net, to be­gin on Fri­day, June 5th, 2026.

Ac­cord­ing to sec­tion 67(2) of the Con­sti­tu­tion:

“(2) There shall be a ses­sion of each House once at least in every year, so that a pe­ri­od of six months shall not in­ter­vene be­tween the last sit­ting of Par­lia­ment in one ses­sion and the first sit­ting there­of in the next ses­sion.”

This Par­lia­ment was opened on May 23rd, 2025, so it could not go be­yond last Fri­day.

Pro­ro­ga­tion is man­dat­ed in our writ­ten con­sti­tu­tions in the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean to re­quire Par­lia­ment to ter­mi­nate its busi­ness at least every 12 months. Usu­al­ly, all un­fin­ished busi­ness will lapse at the end of a ses­sion un­less it has been specif­i­cal­ly saved to be con­tin­ued in the next ses­sion.

In the un­writ­ten con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed King­dom, there can be ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods of time of more than one year when there can be no pro­ro­ga­tion.

This is not­ed in the dic­tum in the re­cent fa­mous UK case of R (on the ap­pli­ca­tion of Miller)(Ap­pel­lant) v The Prime Min­is­ter (Re­spon­dent), Cher­ry and oth­ers (Re­spon­dents) v Ad­vo­cate Gen­er­al for Scot­land (Ap­pel­lant)(Scot­land) [2019] UKSC 41 as fol­lows:

“3. Par­lia­ment does not de­cide when it should be pro­rogued. This is a pre­rog­a­tive pow­er ex­er­cised by the Crown on the ad­vice of the Privy Coun­cil. In prac­tice, as not­ed in the House of Com­mons Li­brary Brief­ing Pa­per (No 8589, 11th June 2019), ‘this process has been a for­mal­i­ty in the UK for more than a cen­tu­ry: the Gov­ern­ment of the day ad­vis­es the Crown to pro­rogue and that re­quest is ac­qui­esced to.’ In the­o­ry, the monarch could at­tend Par­lia­ment and make the procla­ma­tion pro­rogu­ing it in per­son, but the last Monarch to do this was Queen Vic­to­ria in 1854. Un­der cur­rent prac­tice, a procla­ma­tion is made by Or­der in Coun­cil a few days be­fore the ac­tu­al pro­ro­ga­tion, spec­i­fy­ing a range of days with­in which Par­lia­ment may be pro­rogued and the date on which the pro­ro­ga­tion would end…” (para. 3).

This par­tic­u­lar case in­volved a chal­lenge to the ex­er­cise of the pow­er of pro­ro­ga­tion by Queen Eliz­a­beth II on the ad­vice of then prime min­is­ter Boris John­son.

The UK Par­lia­ment had been in ses­sion since 2017 and ac­cord­ing to Nik­ki da Cos­ta, Di­rec­tor of Leg­isla­tive Af­fairs in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, in a mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed Au­gust 15th, 2019, to Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son, this had been the longest ses­sion since records be­gan. (para. 17).

This dis­sim­i­lar­i­ty be­tween the West­min­ster mod­el in the UK and the West­min­ster-White­hall mod­el in the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean con­firms the in­ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty of the Miller case to Com­mon­wealth Caribbean democ­ra­cies.

In the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean, the re­quire­ment to pro­rogue brings with it no for­mal sit­tings of Par­lia­ment. How­ev­er, it is a tool that has al­so been used by re­gion­al prime min­is­ters to shield them­selves from ad­verse po­lit­i­cal cir­cum­stances. Such us­age has been de­scribed as po­lit­i­cal­ly-mo­ti­vat­ed pro­ro­ga­tions.

The late prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning ad­vised then Pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son to pro­rogue Par­lia­ment on April 6th 2002, af­ter the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives failed to elect a Speak­er dur­ing the 18-18 tied Par­lia­ment. The gov­ern­ment could not end the sit­ting af­ter two days of fail­ure to choose a Speak­er be­cause it did not have a ma­jor­i­ty. The on­ly way out of the sit­ting was by pro­ro­ga­tion.

In Guyana, then Pres­i­dent Don­ald Ramo­tar pro­rogued Par­lia­ment on the day that a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence was to be de­bat­ed in his gov­ern­ment on No­vem­ber 10th, 2014. He even­tu­al­ly had to dis­solve Par­lia­ment on Feb­ru­ary 28th, 2015, as a gen­er­al elec­tion was due.

In Grena­da, prime min­is­ter Her­bert Blaize ad­vised a pro­ro­ga­tion on Au­gust 23rd, 1989, at a time when he was fac­ing a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence, which pre­vent­ed any sit­ting of the House un­til Par­lia­ment had to be dis­solved on De­cem­ber 28th, 1989. Blaize died in of­fice on De­cem­ber 19th, 1989.

The elec­tion win­ner, PM Till­man Thomas, al­so used the tech­nique of a pro­ro­ga­tion to avoid a sec­ond mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in Sep­tem­ber 2012, hav­ing sur­vived one in May 2012. The sec­ond one was more omi­nous. He ad­vised the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al to pro­rogue Par­lia­ment on Sep­tem­ber 10th, 2012, there­by avoid­ing the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion that he was like­ly to lose. Even­tu­al­ly, Par­lia­ment was dis­solved on Jan­u­ary 9th, 2013, and he lost the gen­er­al elec­tion on Feb­ru­ary 19th, 2013.

Pro­ro­ga­tion is usu­al­ly a very be­nign par­lia­men­tary in­stru­ment; how­ev­er, it can be used by Heads of Gov­ern­ment to play for po­lit­i­cal time, as hap­pened in T&T in 2002, Grena­da in 1989 and 2012, and Guyana in 2014.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is 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. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.