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The shadow-line
December 24, 2000
By Denis Solomon
FROM the moment he took office in 1995, Basdeo Panday has shown that he intends to use our pseudo-Westminster system to obtain all of the advantages of Presidential government with none of the drawbacks. From his years in the Parliamentary wilderness he learned better than anyone else that once the PNM hegemony was broken, no party, especially the UNC, and more especially if voting lists remained unpadded, would ever have a serious majority again. The way to convert electoral weakness to near-dictatorial strength was to use the deficiencies of the Parliamentary structure in as many cynical ways as possible; thereby following, I hasten to add, in the footsteps of the PNM, but more consciously, more deliberately and more imaginatively.
The key to our disguised form of Presidential government has always been the Senate, with its built-in government majority and its nefarious role as a stepping-stone for un-electables to Ministerial office. It is an enormous discredit to the political intelligence of the population that no politician has ever even had to pretend that the Senate was anything else. When the PNM decided it wanted Eammon Carter to be President of the Senate, they did not even pretend that the Senate, which is supposed to elect its President, had any choice. They simply announced that Carter was to be President, before he was even appointed to a seat in the Chamber.
In the controversy over the replacement of two Senators from Tobago in January this year, the egregious UNC Minister of Public Administration, Wade Mark, even went so far as to claim that democracy would be threatened if the Government’s right to throw out Senators who didn’t toe the line was taken away.
Another sign of the breakdown of the pseudo-Westminster system is that from now on nobody expects the House of Representatives to be able to elect a Speaker from among its own members. Instead, one will be imposed from outside by the majority. We are told that this time the mantle will fall on the dotish former Minister of Misinformation, and self-proclaimed Independent PNM member of the UNC, Rupert Griffith.
Now it might reasonably be argued that for a chief executive to be able to pick his management team wherever he likes is desirable. So it is: in fact, it is the basis of a Presidential system. But in a Presidential system the whole executive, not just part of it, is outside the legislature. The President is elected separately from the legislature. He has no control over it other than persuasion, and it has considerable control over him. Furthermore, the President is the sole executive: he shares executive power with no other Head of State. In our bastard system, the executive is not only inside the legislature, but the legislature is so small that he exercises full control over it too. As a result, the only check on his power is precisely the person who is supposed to do his bidding in almost everything without question: the President of the Republic. Whenever this check comes into operation we have a near crisis; the row over the Tobago Senators and last week’s delay in the re-appointment of Panday are examples.
In a Parliamentary system a weak majority means difficulty in governing, because legislative defeat (not necessarily defection) can lead to loss of office. The good side of that coin is that legislation cannot be railroaded through by an arrogant majority.
In a Presidential system a President elected by a small majority may have a big majority of party colleagues in the legislature, and vice versa. But in no case is there any chance of the government falling before the next election.
There is merit in both systems, and sooner or later we must decide which we want. But to continue to fool ourselves that we have one when we have neither is a formula for dictatorship. Which is what is in the process of happening at this moment. And Mr Panday is directing the process in ways the PNM never even thought of. One of the PNM’s most notorious assaults on the principle of Parliamentary representation (enthusiastically supported by the then Opposition, led by Basdeo Panday) was the Crossing the Floor amendment to the Constitution.
The purpose of this Act was quite simply to enable party leaders to use the supreme law of the land to guarantee their party against defection, and therefore against the need for healthy internal compromise.
Panday is now doing something similar, without even having to legislate it. His intention to bring defeated UNC candidates into government via the Senate is not only a way of building a cabinet of yes-men, but a means of rewarding party loyalists at public expense, and also of keeping them active, given the fact that the UNC, as a party, hardly exists between elections.
An extension of this is the upside-down scheme Panday has hit upon to use the defeated candidates as “shadow MPs servicing the constituencies”. It is upside-down because it is the Opposition, not the Government, that normally has “shadows”, and they are “shadow ministers”, not “shadow MPs”. In other words, you have to be at least an MP before you can be a shadow.
Now, any political party worthy of the name is as active between elections as at election time, and “services” its constituencies whether they have MPs or not. Panday’s proposal is both an acknowledgment that the UNC constituency organisation has already ceased to exist, and a means of keeping the party alive in the constituencies at public expense.
Because Panday’s “shadows” will be Senators and Ministers, and they are certain to try to get their travel expenses borne by the State. This is a direct infringement of the strict Westminster separation between official and party activity, and it is something the Integrity Commission should be empowered to look into.
The reports coming out of Panday’s pre-cabinet meeting on Thursday bear all the signs of one-man governed pseudo-democratic quasi-dictatorship. Even the photographs show Panday seated, not at the head of the table but at a head table all by himself. Gone is any pretence of “first among equals”. Carlos John’s sycophantic proclamation that Panday’s “wish is my command” sits strangely with John’s “managerial” arrogance in suggesting that he could do any job equally well.
A sinister note was also struck by John when he described the merger of Trade and Foreign Affairs “along the lines of the Singapore model”. The Singapore model is the classic example of a one-party state justifying itself in terms of its “efficiency”, while opponents of the ruling party languish in jail without trial for 20 years.
One humorous note in the reports was the announcement that Carlos John is likely to be made Minister for Infrastructure. John’s pie-crust paving of the nation is more of a superstructure than an infrastructure. But what’s in a name?
Copyright © Denis Solomon
