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Power to the party
December 3, 2000
By Denis Solomon
LAST Tuesday Mr Patrick Manning, facing the press on a TTT programme, showed some of the dignified calm that would have stood him in good stead had he been able to lure the frenetic Mr Basdeo Panday into a pre-election debate. The appearance may have done him some good anyway, for it was impossible for a viewer not to make a comparison between the two men, even in the absence of one of them.
It is true that while Mr Manning, in answer to one of the questions, was proclaiming the indispensability of a free press and the nefariousness of the UNC government’s assaults on the media, his former deputy, Dr Keith Rowley, was lambasting the press for claiming that “there was something wrong” with the citizenship law.
This is ironic in that it is Mr Panday who has sworn eternal enmity against the media, and in particularly CCN, an attitude that has cost him dearly. Of course, Dr Rowley was not silly enough to name the media organs with which he was finding fault. The similarity to Mr Panday would have been too glaring. But it was pretty obvious that he was referring to the Express editorial of November 23, and perhaps to my Sunday Express column of November 26.
Both of these suggested that there was a discrepancy between Section 48(1)(a) of the Constitution and the latest version of the Citizenship Act. The Prime Minister, admittedly not an impartial observer, agreed with this when he said that the consequences of the dual citizenship amendment had not been foreseen when the amendment was being drafted.
But even if “discrepancy” is interpreted as “something wrong with the law”, both the editorial and my column emphasised that Gypsy and Bill Chaitan had broken the law and could be punished for it. Whether the voters in the two constituencies wanted Gypsy and Chaitan to represent them in spite of this was a separate question and should be tested.
But to return to the Leader of the Opposition. Whatever superficially statesmanlike image he managed to convey on the TTT programme was shattered when he was asked how soon after taking office, if he was re-elected, he would take steps to prevent floor-crossing. His answer, delivered with lip-licking relish, was “within seconds”.
The desire for legislative restriction on crossing the floor is the opposite of statesmanship. It is a declaration of contempt for citizens, for it implicitly binds them to voting for a party instead of for an individual who may or may not concur exactly with the philosophy of his party. It deprives the constituents of the floor-crossing MP of the right to choose whether they want him to continue to represent them despite his rupture with the party, or to demand his resignation.
Paradoxically, if the MP concerned has integrity, it encourages rupture rather than compromise, because it encourages intransigence in the party leadership. It degrades the concept of Parliament by erecting parties above Parliament as the instruments of representation of the people.
To depend on the Constitution of one’s country to guarantee one’s party against schisms and splits, and thereby obviate the need for continual compromise within it, is the opposite of statesmanship. This is one of the many reasons why Eric Williams, the father of the crossing-the-floor Act, was not a statesman.
No reference to political parties, or to the politics of election, has any place in the Constitution. The Constitution defines the person to be called upon to form a government first as the leader of the party with the greatest number of seats, and only afterward as the one who commands the greatest support in the House of Representatives. It is wrong to do so.
The second definition alone should appear. In Lloyd Best’s phrase, parties are the private face of politics. The Constitution regulates only the public processes of governance.
In short, what Manning is seeking is the perpetuation of a rubber-stamp Parliament under the control of the maximum leader, and the caudillismo mentality this induces in the population.
In Trinidad and Tobago Prime Ministers and party leaders have always sought to use instruments rather than conciliation to maintain the supremacy of party (and therefore of the maximum leader) over individual representation. Even before the crossing-the-floor Act the PNM used undated letters of resignation, and the NAR under ANR Robinson sought to bind its candidates with “statutory declarations”.
The Act that Mr. Manning is so anxious to put into effect is embodied in Sections 49 and 49A of the Constitution. It applies not only to MPs who have crossed the floor, but also to those who have resigned from their party and become independents, and to those who have been expelled from their party. It was brought in by Eric Williams’ PNM government when Hector McLean left the PNM, and was supported by Panday only because of his problems with Raffique Shah.
But Manning, though in favour of the principle, kept his mouth shut when Hulsie Bhaggan was expelled from the UNC and Panday screamed for her expulsion from Parliament.
When Lasse and Griffith boosted Panday’s majority by crossing the floor, Manning, as Opposition Leader, invoked the Act, but he was stymied by the fact that the Parliamentary Standing Orders had not been amended in keeping with it. (Another discrepancy?) When he sought to go to court he was stymied by the fact that his deputy, Ken Valley, had signed the petition as Leader of the Opposition. The case failed and Manning was left with a hefty, and so far unpaid, legal bill.
What Manning will obviously seek to do if the PNM is re-elected is to amend the Standing Orders to give the Speaker the power to implement Sections 49 and 49A. His concern is obviously motivated by his fear of a close result. He has no taste for a small majority under constant threat from defection.
But since in Parliament as at present constituted opposition is a futile condition, defections are even more likely from Opposition to Government. If Panday emerges from the election as Leader of the Opposition, he will therefore support Manning as he supported Williams. Once again the Parliamentary establishment will have triumphed over the principle of popular representation.
The fact that restriction on “crossing the floor” is totally out of keeping with the principle of Parliamentary democracy is shown by the fact that in the Constitution the word “party” is nowhere defined. It could never be defined in a way that would give it unassailable legal validity.
It does not even figure in the five pages of definitions in the Representation of the People Act. The word appears in the Constitution only for the purpose of preventing floor-crossing.
Any provision that excludes an elected representative from Parliament for political reasons pre-empts the judgment of the voters. If any MP’s seat is vacated under Section 49A, his constituents ought to challenge his exclusion in court as an infringement of their fundamental rights.
WRONG AND STRONG - By DONNA YAWCHING
Copyright © Denis Solomon
