At the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the 4th Ses­sion of the 12th Par­lia­ment on Sep­tem­ber 10, 2023, our brand-new Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo had lots to say, on old and new mat­ters, but she did not de­vel­op most of the new ones in­for­ma­tive­ly enough. If on­ly she had asked me … .

From the news­pa­per re­ports, she spoke on the fol­low­ing themes: 1) the need for col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion on the mit­i­ga­tion of crime; 2) un­fair pub­lic crit­i­cism of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans; 3) par­lia­men­tary en­dorse­ment of the steel­pan (much like what the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly has done); 4) pro­gres­sive leg­is­la­tion on the rights of peo­ple liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties; 5) leg­is­la­tion to fore­stall the threats posed by Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence; 6) leg­is­la­tion that takes in­to ac­count the new re­al­i­ties of work­ing in a post-pan­dem­ic world; 7) re­view of the Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Or­ders; and 8) de­vel­op­ment of a fixed par­lia­men­tary agen­da.

Her Ex­cel­len­cy tells us up­front that she is go­ing to fo­cus on five mat­ters but, as you can see, she cov­ers at least three more. Mat­ters 1, 4, 7, and 8, I would con­sid­er old, and the rest (2, 3, 5, and 6) I would con­sid­er dif­fer­ent. I would have loved to hear more on these dif­fer­ent ones, but per­haps the press re­ports chinksed on her con­tent. We can agree that all the mat­ters she raised are im­por­tant but that some are more im­por­tant than oth­ers. Some of us would have in­clud­ed mat­ters that seem to be low in im­por­tance to her.

Col­lab­o­ra­tion on crime mit­i­ga­tion seemed to be the most pop­u­lar mat­ter, elic­it­ing views from the al­pha politi­cians. PM Row­ley was dif­fi­dent and sar­cas­tic to boot:

‘Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I’m of the view that there are some col­leagues of mine in the Par­lia­ment who be­lieve that if things get worse, it will get bet­ter for them. I would be very hap­py if that view is not ad­hered to.’

Op­po­si­tion Leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar ob­served that they had heed­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s call for col­lab­o­ra­tion but that it had not worked out:

‘Nu­mer­ous times we have asked the Gov­ern­ment to meet with them. They met once or twice many moons ago and took noth­ing on board that we would have said.’

She went on to point out that all the mat­ters the Pres­i­dent talked about were in the Gov­ern­ment’s hands, im­ply­ing that they should be fa­cil­i­tat­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion process.

And for­mer PM Bas­deo Pan­day re­mind­ed us of some hard po­lit­i­cal facts:

‘In this po­lit­i­cal sys­tem, the Op­po­si­tion wants to take the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion and the Gov­ern­ment wants to pre­vent them from do­ing so. You ex­pect them to co­op­er­ate? That’s war and there­fore, they be­have as though they are at war.’

He went on with em­pha­sis:

‘They are at war. How you ex­pect them to co­op­er­ate? You ex­pect the Op­po­si­tion to co­op­er­ate with the Gov­ern­ment to make them win the next elec­tions? Or you ex­pect the Gov­ern­ment to co­op­er­ate with the Op­po­si­tion for them to win the elec­tions? Sure­ly not! What we need is a change of the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem.’

With a po­lit­i­cal back­ground in which she was MP, cab­i­net min­is­ter, and pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, didn’t the Pres­i­dent know this?

She sug­gest­ed the col­lab­o­ra­tive mech­a­nism of a Pub­lic Bill Com­mit­tee (as in the Unit­ed King­dom) that would take away the te­di­um of clause-by-clause analy­sis of new bills and free par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to fo­cus on more in­ter­est­ing tasks, but no re­porter seems to have been in­ter­est­ed enough to ask the al­phas for their views on it.

No­body seems to have been tak­en up ei­ther with is­sues not cov­ered by the Pres­i­dent. Is­sues like trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and To­bag­on­ian au­ton­o­my. If on­ly she had asked me...

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar felt that the Pres­i­dent missed ‘a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty’ to ex­plore the is­sues of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, and Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine thought that au­ton­o­my was one of the is­sues she should have de­clared her­self on. Hear Au­gus­tine:

‘I think it is about time (for the re­al­i­sa­tion of au­ton­o­my). Al­though the Pres­i­dent didn’t make it one of her five wish­es, I am hop­ing that it would be the wish of the cur­rent ses­sion of Par­lia­ment for us to re­vive au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go be­cause all of that would treat with is­sues such as in­ter-is­land trans­porta­tion ser­vice, health­care, and so many oth­er is­sues that the av­er­age To­bag­on­ian ex­pe­ri­ences dai­ly, that the av­er­age Trinida­di­an might be obliv­i­ous to.’

As­so­ci­at­ed with au­ton­o­my is the Pres­i­dent’s ap­point­ment of four new In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, with none com­ing from To­ba­go. She was prob­a­bly work­ing with the per­spec­tive that she had kept Dr Maria Dil­lon-Re­my, a To­bag­on­ian and that the lat­ter was a suf­fi­cient rep­re­sen­ta­tive for To­ba­go (to the ex­tent that In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors are picked to rep­re­sent par­tic­u­lar con­stituen­cies. But in our pol­i­tics, To­ba­go is a po­lit­i­cal con­stituen­cy, but it is not spe­cial­ly rep­re­sent­ed in the Sen­ate.

There are 31 sen­a­tors and all ex­cept three are Trinida­di­ans–Nigel De Fre­itas and Lau­rence His­lop (rep­re­sent­ing the PNM), and Dr. Dil­lon-Re­my (un­af­fil­i­at­ed). The oth­er arrange­ments are as fol­lows: 16 PNM voic­es but on­ly two are To­bag­on­ian; six UNC voic­es but none is To­bag­on­ian; nine In­de­pen­dent voic­es but on­ly one is To­bag­on­ian. Clear­ly, there is in­equal­i­ty against To­ba­go in the Sen­ate.

With her con­sid­er­able ex­pe­ri­ence, Her Ex­cel­len­cy must be aware of this un­equal state of af­fairs and, ac­cord­ing­ly, should have sought to have it ad­dressed. She could have ap­point­ed four To­bag­on­ian In­de­pen­dents to join Dr Dil­lon-Re­my (with the ad­van­tage go­ing to To­ba­go, hav­ing re­gard to the long his­tor­i­cal ad­van­tage en­joyed by Trinidad). In­deed, what about amend­ing things so that the seats in the Sen­ate are di­vid­ed equal­ly be­tween the two is­lands?

As Pan­day ob­served, the sys­tem needs to be changed.

Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment, and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten hun­dreds of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try. He can be reached at jay­win­ster

@gmail.com