Having perused the Report of the National Advisory Committee on Constitutional Reform (197 pages), I congratulate the eight-member committee, chaired by former speaker Barry Sinanan, for its obviously hard work in producing a viable basis to stimulate citizens' interest in several critical constitutional matters - political representation, political performance, accountability and small-state democracy as a whole.
The current protracted controversies over Tobago's political autonomy, the Salaries Review Commission report, the Privy Council ruling in the Auditor General's appeal, financial overruns in the Tobago airport construction, awarding silk, etc, help expose the deficiencies in the system of political accountability and sanctions. And the population is left quite unsettled, with serious political implications.
These matters are directly connected one way or another to the powers and decisions of the executive, meaning, firstly, the Prime Minister and his ministers. The joint select committees merely duplicate the suffocating redundancy in Parliament.
However, the PNM government met it so. The British Westminster parliament is tightly locked down by its compelling history.
Ours is vastly different. Even so, they have protocols and codes of ethics to restrain their executive.
The results from the Advisory Committee's report reveal a very high level of public dissatisfaction with the current electoral and political system, executive powers, weaknesses of Parliament and non-performing ministers.
One constitutional remedy proposed is to have a president directly elected by the people - 30 per cent of the respondents said so for government structural reform while 50 per cent said so for executive reform.
But it is more than just numbers; it is the democratic principle. Last April, I already suggested the benefits of a 'directly elected president' and an executive outside the legislature.
While I appreciate the Advisory Committee's view of this country being politically 'contradictory,' etc, it is precisely because of that that constitution reform requires courage, vision and a fresh understanding of fuller democracy for us. Does every man or woman's natural vote (eg through proportional representation) count in the artificial first-past-the-post?
Given the 'separation of powers' doctrine and French political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu's warnings, our Parliament's apparent restrictions in demanding not only accountability but sanctions would make some believe the system is a 'fake democracy' - a question for Caricom post-colonial states too.
So how could Parliament properly command the executive to account to the legislature? It can't now.
Why? As I said before, the answer lies not merely in the early wisdom of the father of the revered doctrine of separation of powers between the judiciary, executive and legislature, Montesquieu, but in his powerful corollary: 'When the legislature and executive powers are unified in the same person or same body, there can be no liberty.' Here it
