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Breathing space
October 02, 2001
By Denis Solomon
As I write, Ramesh Maharaj is the only back-bencher on the government side of the House of Representatives (don't forget, everybody else is at least a junior Minister).
But he is not crossing the floor. He has said that he will support or oppose government legislative proposals as they arise. At the time of writing neither Trevor Sudama nor Ralph Maraj has lived up to his Musketeer oath. But Ramesh says he expects them to do so.
The Prime Minister is on his way to the Rienzi Complex to attend a meeting of the party executive, accompanied by busloads of supporters, doubtless to ensure that the meeting will not take place.
Outnumbered in the party executive and with the Damoclean sword of legislative defeat hanging over his head, the Prime Minister's final option now seems to be to go for broke by taking both the battle for government and the battle for party control to the electorate.
But can he? This is where the President comes into the picture. The country is still no clearer about the subject of the President's discussions last Thursday with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.
One possibility mentioned by the press, but denied by President's House, was that they were about the possibility of an interim government.
Speculation about an interim government, however, did not extend to defining "interim". Interim pending what?
Even before the firing of Maharaj, the situation with regard to a change of government was not straightforward. As long as the government is not defeated on an important Bill, or the dissidents do not explicitly inform the President of their withdrawal of support from the Prime Minister, there is no question of a change of administration.
In fact, even in the first of these eventualities the government would have to resign of its own accord. There is no provision of the Constitution that clearly empowers the President to decide that a government has lost its majority, even in the event of a legislative defeat.
The relevant constitutional provisions are in fact written backwards. Instead of empowering the President to determine whether the Prime Minister still commands majority support, and replace him, it states that "when there is occasion for the appointment of a prime minister" the President shall appoint the person who has a majority. What such an "occasion" might be, other than a general election or a no-confidence resolution, is anyone's guess.
It is true that the President "shall act in his own deliberate judgment" in the exercise of his power to appoint the Prime Minister. But this is interpretable as being subordinate to the phrase "when there is occasion".
The likelihood of the Prime Minister attempting to call a snap election receded with the delay (probably, and ironically, engineered by Ramesh Maharaj) of the election petitions by the Constitutional motions.
Now, not only has Mr Panday's situation in Parliament worsened, but the court's decision may be imminent. If Mr Panday should seek an election now, the ball would be in the President's court, and the shots Mr Robinson might play are several.
He might refuse Mr Panday's request outright, on the grounds that until the election petitions are resolved the government is only in office provisionally. This is the least likely scenario.
On the other hand, Mr Robinson might accept the Prime Minister's right to ask for an election, but refuse to name a date until the election petitions are determined, after which Mr Panday might no longer have a majority and the question of an election would have been superseded.
A more likely possibility would turn on the definition of a general election.
The President could well take the view that a general election could only be called if writs could be issued for all 36 constituencies, an impossibility if four of them are in limbo.
Finally, despite Mr Manning's boasts of a PNM government by Christmas, the Court's decision is not a foregone conclusion. It could simply declare the Pointe-a-Pierre and Ortoire-Mayaro results invalid, which would mean by-elections.
Or, if it is satisfied that the voters had sufficient notice of the invalidity of the candidacies, it could hand the constituencies to the PNM. But there is a further complication: the Court might disqualify Gypsy but not Chaitan, on the grounds that Chaitan did all in his power to renounce his Canadian citizenship before nomination day.
In the first case the line-up would be 18-17-1 in favour of the PNM. But the country would then have a government holding office by a court decision and not by the popular vote.
In the second case the line-up would be UNC 18, PNM 17, NAR 1, with the NAR member presumably supporting the PNM.
Deadlock.
Whether or not an election would ensue is anybody's guess. A lot of horse-trading would have to take place. Sudama and Maraj may well be considering their options of alliance with the PNM even now. But if the horse-trading failed, the ambiguity of the Constitution regarding the President's powers would still apply. In any case, the present deficiencies in the EBC's arrangements mean that the public would have no faith in an election, before or after the court decision. So Mr Panday will have to think long and hard before he risks the humiliation of having his request for an election delayed or refused. On the other hand, as long as the Three Musketeers remain on the government benches, the crisis of representation continues.
Here is where the idea of an interim government begins to make sense. It might involve a procedure similar to that adopted by the Dominican Republic in 1994.
In that country's presidential elections, there were massive irregularities, confirmed by all the international observer bodies. The parties made a "Pact for Democracy", under which the constitution was amended to reform the electoral commission, and new elections were held two years later instead of four.
In our case, there could be an agreement, presumably brokered by the President, for one of the two parties, or a "technocratic" administration made up of members of both, to serve, say, another year of the present mandate, after which an election would be held. The EBC would use the time to get the electoral lists in order.
The public could also use the time to discuss how the Constitution should be amended to avoid recurrence of the present impasse. If the parties can agree, inside the Parliament, on an interim arrangement for government, they will also have an obligation, outside Parliament, to promote discussion of a new dispensation for the nation as a whole.
The ferment in the UNC, in particular, could be the beginning of a Constituent Assembly. The next election would then also be a referendum on a new Constitution.
Copyright © 2004 Denis Solomon