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Winner take nothing
December 30, 2001
By Denis Solomon
I KNEW it would never have worked, but I confess I didn’t foresee how quickly it would collapse.
What a bunch of clowns we have produced! From Arthur N R Robinson, with his waffling about spirituality, down to Sat Maharaj with his bin Laden similes, the political class of Trinidad and Tobago has revealed itself in all its glory. Ignorance, stupidity, bad faith, arrogance, suspicion, superstition, greed; a persistent refusal of objectivity, a total incapacity to see beyond the immediate rewards of office; these are the qualities that starkly characterise the politics of Trinidad and Tobago at this moment. And they are displayed against a Constitutional background that both the major actors and the country as a whole persistently refuse to see as offering no possible legal way out of the monkey-pants.
Everybody fooled themselves that the “deliberate judgment” clause of the Constitution empowered the President to appoint a Prime Minister without a majority. (The Express said that in an editorial as late as December 28). This nonsense enabled us to blind ourselves to the fact that the UNC-PNM “agreement” would solve nothing even when Robinson had made his choice. Mr Robinson, knowing full well that the clause was both legally irrelevant and politically useless, should either have refused to make any appointment or, having made it, kept his mouth shut.
It is typical of this country that a political crisis should be triggered by the most meaningless of phrases. I am a Doctor of Philosophy but I can assign no meaning to the word “spirituality”, and I challenge anybody to explain it in words that do not just refer to other words. Nevertheless, Mr Robinson should have realised that it gave the UNC the excuse for overthrowing an agreement to which they had no intention of adhering. The subsequent meaningless brouhaha gave them time to “discover” more substantial reasons: the supposed PNM bias of Professor Max Richards, and the shady background of several PNM appointees.
Presidential stupidity and UNC bad faith was now compounded by PNM arrogance. Manning followed in Panday’s footsteps by making everybody a Minister, emphasising the fact that power has always been the sole desideratum of parties and politicians. He rubbed the UNC’s, and the country’s, nose in the mess by the copious admixture of proven nonentities and shady characters in his lineup. In the process he antagonised his own party to the extent of causing a revolt at Balisier House, with at least one prospective MP threatening to cross the floor by ten o’clock on Saturday if he wasn’t given a portfolio.
As the more thoughtful commentators (all three of us) said when the UNC-PNM talks were taking place, only alternating Prime Ministership and free voting would have given the agreement any chance of working. But the main element lacking in the talks was the one that should characterise any negotiations for a “national unity” government —bargaining for portfolios, and negotiation between rival policies for the furtherance of the country’s interests, other than commissions of enquiry into past misdeeds. But the object of these talks was not governance but government. There is no hope for compromise among people for whom the only alternative to everything is nothing.
Even then, Manning might have shown good faith by offering one or two portfolios to the UNC. They might not have been accepted, but it would have taken the wind out of Panday’s sails.
If there is no Speaker, there is no legislature. No legislature means no Cabinet. No Cabinet means no Prime Minister. Panday is right when he says the government is illegal, and he should remain in office for the next six months. But he cannot give the real reason, because he was party to the conspiracy to overlook it in the first place, in the hope that the choice would fall on him. So he has to rely on spurious ones. Meanwhile, he will maintain the deadlock by refusing to name a Speaker (even if Manning leaves the choice to him) in the hope of going to the polls, a move that he ruled out a week ago.
All the constitutional anomalies we have overlooked in the past in our persistent self-delusion have now come to the fore. Rupert Griffith was wrongly appointed Speaker before the House of Representatives existed, though in 2000 there was at least a prospect of one. Now there is no prospect of a House of Representatives precisely because that already unconstitutional option is closed. In 2000 the President was reluctant to appoint un-elected people to Ministries before appointing them to the Senate: in 2001 he has done so although there is no Senate and no prospect of one.
But the greatest constitutional self-delusion that persists is that new elections offer a way out. The UNC seems sufficiently mesmerised by its majority of the popular vote to think that it can avoid another hung Parliament. If either party can do this, it will be by pure chance. The problem of representation in a multi-ethnic society will not go away as long as the legislature is elected on a constituency basis.
Copyright © 2004 Denis Solomon
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