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Freedom, not freeness
December 19, 2002
By Denis Solomon
It has at last filtered into the thick heads of one or two of our political scientologists that with a 36 seat House of Representatives and a population permanently riven into two blocs, the majority of three on which the PNM tried to improve in 1995 was an anomaly, and its present four-seat one a miracle.
It has also finally dawned on these gurus that every government from now on will take office on the basis of the results in a few marginal (i.e. ethnically balanced) constituencies, and that this situation lends itself to the possibility of a government having a majority of parliamentary seats on the basis of a minority of the popular vote.
They have not so far seen the global picture to the extent of realising that for the same reasons there will also no longer be the slightest possibility of a Speaker being elected from within the House of Representatives. Nor, being long on statistics but short on political philosophy, have they realised that this situation makes nonsense of the independence of Parliament (i.e. the sovereignty of the people), all the more shamefully in that it was foreseen and "solved" years ago by the constitutional provision that permits a Speaker to be chosen elsewhere. In other words, the framers of the Constitution knew that Parliament would not be independent, and didn't care. The idea that Parliament is simply a device for enabling governments to operate is present by default in the thinking of the gurus, and overt in the statements and behaviour of practising politicians. Its most blatant manifestation is to be found in the support of both parties for the nefarious Crossing the Floor Act, designed to place party above Parliament in the process of representation. This support has not wavered despite the failure of every attempt to enforce it, and, in the specific case of the present Prime Minister, despite his being forced to admit he was hoping for defections from the UNC to break the 18-18 deadlock.
The solution being adumbrated is a form of proportional representation whereby the constituency system would be replaced by a system of party slates, with parliamentary seats being allotted in proportion to the number of votes received by each party.
This by itself would be no more of a solution to our underlying ethnic politics than any other single device, such as the Crossing the Floor Act or the selection of a Speaker outside Parliament. First of all, it would not necessarily be a guarantee against two parties having an equal number of seats. This possibility would have to be rendered unimportant by combining proportional representation with other radical provisions, such as community empowerment through improved local government, and some form of separation of executive from legislature, whether in a presidential system or in the unusual House of Government/House of Representation scheme proposed by Lloyd Best. Only such a combination of provisions would gradually render ethnic voting meaningless.
One danger to be avoided in this type of proportional representation is the proliferation of parties. The most cynical example of this is Guyana, where Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandys imposed, with the unwitting acquiescence of Cheddi Jagan, a system that kept Jagan in opposition for 30 years, although he had the support of the majority of the population. Initially, this was achieved by setting the threshold for obtaining seats in Parliament so low that bogus small parties such as that of D'Aguiar could form coalitions with Burnham to hold on to government. This situation was then consolidated by repeated electoral fraud.
The most ludicrous example of a proportional system with a low threshold is Italy, where there are something like 120 parties represented in Parliament. Parties spring up like mushrooms, muster enough votes to get one or two members into Parliament and then bargain furiously to increase their influence and share in spoils. The result is a mass of trends and tendencies that shifts continuously according to the legislation being proposed, and has given rise to a continued alternation of administrations of legendary impermanence.
The situation is made even worse by the fact that parties, once they come into existence, are subsidised by the State—i.e. the taxpayer. In Trinidad and Tobago, whose citizens have an ingrained aversion to making financial contributions to any organisation to which they may belong, from trade unions to sports clubs, the suggestion that political parties should receive State financing has been welcomed by people who should know better, ostensibly as a way of enabling parties without the support of big business to stand up to those that have it. The issue is also confused by the blurred distinction between party financing and campaign financing. Parties should be able to raise as much money as they can from any source, provided the process is transparent; campaign financing, like media access, should be tightly controlled to ensure a level electoral playing field.
Both the question of party financing and the question of the threshold in a proportional system boil down to the question of where the compromises, accommodations and horse-trading of politics should take place. Obviously some of this will go on in Parliament: if there is no possibility of dissension among members of the same party in Parliament we are back to doctor politics. But the major accommodations involved in forging a party's philosophy must take place outside. Parties are the private face of politics. If every little shade of political orientation can be publicly financed to find its way into Parliament with a view to holding the others to ransom, the only result will be instability and wasted energy.
Besides, democracy means freedom, not freeness. Equality of educational opportunity doesn't mean you have an automatic right to a degree. The right to organise a political party doesn't mean you should be boosted into Parliament with other people's money. A party's capacity to raise money is one measure of its validity. A recent editorial in the British Daily Telegraph, entitled "Let Them Go Bust", had this to say on the subject:
"If enough people cannot be persuaded that a party is worth backing, why on earth should it not be allowed to go bust?
"…If political parties are allowed to become more reliant on the taxpayer, they will become less, not more, accountable, and therefore more, not less, corrupt.
"Such a lack of accountability might suit the politicians, who increasingly seem to regard fundraising as an irksome, even demeaning, chore. But there would be nothing in it for the taxpayer–and the voter."
Copyright © Denis Solomon