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Robbie’s heart was not in it
December 26, 2001
By Denis Solomon
On Monday evening President Arthur N R Robinson put the cap on a non-event in Trinidad and Tobago’s non-politics with a non-announcement. Having complimented Messrs. Basdeo Panday and Patrick Manning for placing a responsibility on him that he didn’t want, he discharged it as briefly as he could, said goodnight, and buggered off.
It was distressing to compare the President’s performance with his appearance on national television in January this year, when in a long and unscripted speech he exercised, as he said, his duty to “advise and warn” against the appointment of seven election losers to the Senate. That address was dignified, coherent, controlled and erudite, and despite repeated references to personal fallibility, forceful.
On Monday, the outstanding impression conveyed by the President’s address was of a man definitely ill at ease. The pauses in his brief speech were not, as in January, the pauses of a man marshalling his thoughts in an unscripted flow of rhetoric, but rather the floundering of a man performing a distasteful and unconvincing verbal duty. In a word, his heart was not in it.
The non-conclusion brought by the President’s non-announcement to the country’s prolonged non-crisis of non-government was met with an appropriate non-reaction by the media (One is tempted to say, non-media). After weeks of public disquiet fuelled largely by their own hype, neither of the two television channels saw fit to follow the President’s announcement with a panel discussion on its implications for the future, or even a commentary by what they love to call a “political analyst”. On TV6 all we got was a random shot of the President having his microphone removed, a brief back view of two unidentified individuals crossing in front of the camera, and three seconds of Sunil Ramdeen mouthing soundlessly. Then back to the pre-Christmas inanities. So much for the resolution of the “grave political challenge facing President and people” that has been the subject of so much editorial waffle.
Nevertheless, the President did say something, when he could have chosen to say nothing. However unconvinced he may himself have seemed by his own words, they do bear examination.
First, one must ask oneself what the task facing the President really was. It was not simply to appoint a Prime Minister. Provided he accepted that the Constitution allowed him to do so, a view that was not strengthened by being part of the agreement between Panday and Manning, he could have done it by flipping a coin. What the President really had to explain was, first, why he agreed that it was his duty to make an appointment for which the Constitution gives him no authority, and secondly, if the choice was to fall on Manning, why as President he saw fit to dethrone a government that, as a politician, he had himself put in office.
Mr Robinson acquitted himself rather better of the second task than of the first. In his January speech he was reacting to a proposed course of action on the part of the Prime Minister that he, Robinson, judged to be a step toward dictatorship. He was of course wrong: there is nothing inherently undemocratic in the appointment of election losers to the Senate. Mr Robinson neglected to suggest what, if this step were taken, the next step might be, and why any further steps would not be prevented by the Constitution as it stands. Sixteen “losers” in the Senate is not forbidden by the Constitution; seventeen is. But Mr Robinson obviously believed the country was on a slippery slope, and his justification for attempting to pull it back he found in God, the Preamble to the Constitution, the folk wisdom of his mother, the philosophy of Locke and the erudition of Jennings and Wade. All irrelevant, because it begged the question of why his interpretation of these sources should be superior to the interpretation of those who put him where he was. But sincere and convincing, at least to those already convinced.
On Monday Mr Robinson attempted the same thing, relying on this occasion on God, the Preamble to the Constitution, the wisdom of his Oxford tutor, the standing conferred on him by his 1990 call for an “attack with full force”, and a variety of oaths of office, not, significantly, limited to his own. Just as in January he admitted fallibility, calling (insincerely) for logical arguments to refute his position, on this occasion he proclaimed his distaste for the burden placed on him. But this time he was far less convincing. For Mr Robinson must have realised that the country is now at least dimly aware that the situation was not a burden at all but a national monkey-pants, not soluble by constitutional means, for which Robinson, as a traditional politician, is as responsible as anyone else.
As for his justification of Manning’s appointment, this is where the references to oaths of office come in. At the first mention of oaths of office, of moral and spiritual values, it was clear that he was going to appoint Manning. Of the arguments advanced in favour of each of the contestants, the one he had taken on board was the perceived corruption of the Panday administration. Panday had violated his oath of office and thereby his duty to “God, human rights and family values”, and Robinson’s oath of office obliged him to dump Panday.
It was also significant that immediately upon being sworn in, Manning announced the appointment of Glenda Morean as Attorney General. Morean was the chief propounder in the press of the theory that Panday’s corruption should be the deciding factor in the President’s choice.
Where does all this leave the country? In no better situation than it was in on Monday morning. We had a government but no Parliament. Now we have a government, but still no Parliament. And this is not because of the 18-18 split. It is because we have never had a Parliament. And, in consequence, never much of a government, either. The only benefit we may derive rom Monday’s non-event is that we are beginning to realise this.
Copyright © 2004 Denis Solomon
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