Den­nis Pan­tin

?Con­tri­bu­tion to YesTT Nalis pan­el on June 30, on Ref­er­en­dum and Re­call

The Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form Fo­rum has long been ad­vo­cat­ing the in­clu­sion, in con­sti­tu­tion re­form, of the right of the peo­ple to call ref­er­en­dums on is­sues of na­tion­al im­por­tance and, al­so, to re­call their rep­re­sen­ta­tives for breach of con­tract. It was, there­fore, quite easy to ac­cept the in­vi­ta­tion to be a pan­el­list on this Yestt dis­cus­sion, led by vis­it­ing Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Lon­don Prof Mads Vortrup.

The learned pro­fes­sor has made an eru­dite, wit­ty pre­sen­ta­tion, where he out­lined the ad­van­tages of ref­er­en­dums and re­call, in­clud­ing high­er lev­els of elec­toral par­tic­i­pa­tion, less cor­rup­tion and im­proved al­lo­ca­tion of State re­sources in coun­tries where these tools of di­rect democ­ra­cy ex­ist. Prof Sel­wyn Ryan, in his con­tri­bu­tion, point­ed to some of the im­ple­men­ta­tion chal­lenges. These are not in­sur­mount­able, but cer­tain­ly to be not­ed. What both pre­sen­ta­tions beg is how have some so­ci­eties suc­ceed­ed in hav­ing these mea­sures in­clud­ed in their con­sti­tu­tions?

The ques­tion is par­tic­u­lar­ly per­ti­nent for Trinidad and To­ba­go, where the cur­rent prime min­is­ter has in­di­cat­ed that, as a de­mo­c­rat, he has con­clud­ed that T&T does not need ref­er­en­da: no dis­cus­sion, no de­bate, no vote: fi­nal. I would spec­u­late that three fac­tors have been crit­i­cal for suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Il­le­git­i­ma­cy of the ex­ist­ing po­lit­i­cal sys­tem

"If it ent broke, don't fix it" is a phi­los­o­phy–to­geth­er with the law of in­er­tia–that ex­plains why an ex­ist­ing con­sti­tu­tion pre­vails. How­ev­er, when it be­comes clear that the sys­tem is not work­ing, its le­git­i­ma­cy comes in­to ques­tion.

A break­down in not mere­ly law and or­der, but al­so in jus­tice–the bedrock on which the for­mer two need to sit(Oth­er­wise you are liv­ing in a re­pres­sive, "or­dered" so­ci­ety)–is cen­tral to such sys­tem pre-col­lapse. The is­sue here is not of a rul­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ty los­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty. Rather, it is a recog­ni­tion that all of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties rep­re­sent six of one and half-a-dozen of the oth­er.

Civ­il so­ci­ety unit­ed mo­bil­i­sa­tion

The sec­ond re­quire­ment is that the di­verse range of or­gan­i­sa­tions that make up civ­il so­ci­ety (labour, busi­ness, pro­fes­sion­al, com­mu­ni­ty, cul­tur­al groups, etc) find the wit and the will to make com­mon cause and unite be­hind some­thing larg­er than per­son­al or sec­tion­al in­ter­est: ie, the fu­ture of the so­ci­ety as a whole.

Lev­el of so­ci­etal ed­u­ca­tion

The third con­di­tion for suc­cess­ful, gen­uine­ly de­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­sti­tu­tion re­form is that the pop­u­la­tion as a whole achieves a cer­tain min­i­mum lev­el of ed­u­ca­tion; this does not mean cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, but a lev­el of com­pre­hen­sion of our col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pay at­ten­tion to and par­tic­i­pate in the af­fairs of the coun­try, which we oth­er­wise ig­nore at our per­il.

Where is T&T?

The first con­di­tion for di­rect democ­ra­cy is prob­a­bly al­ready here in T&T. There is wide­spread cyn­i­cism, not mere­ly about the rul­ing PNM, but al­so the op­po­si­tion par­ties, giv­en their con­tin­ued splin­ter­ing and in­ter­nal bac­cha­nal. The sec­ond con­di­tion has not yet been re­alised. T&T civ­il so­ci­ety is still too di­vid­ed with too much of a pre­vail­ing in­di­vid­u­al­ism.

There are, how­ev­er, some pos­i­tive trends on this score. Fol­low­ing an April 14 pre-Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as civ­il so­ci­ety con­fer­ence at Daa­ga Hall, UWI, for ex­am­ple, a group has been meet­ing to shape a con­sol­i­dat­ed coali­tion of civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions. The next meet­ing is Ju­ly 25, at UWI from 1 pm. There al­so are some in­di­ca­tions that we may be reach­ing crit­i­cal mass, in terms of pop­u­lar un­der­stand­ing of our predica­ment. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has been help­ing tremen­dous­ly on this score, though un­wit­ting­ly.

The peo­ple of John John and, by ex­ten­sion, the heart­land com­mu­ni­ties of the East/West Cor­ri­dor: stal­wart PN­Mites since 1956, got a uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion in pol­i­tics when the PNM po­lit­i­cal leader got up at the re­cent PNM con­ven­tion in Ch­aguara­mas and ma­ligned the mem­o­ry of a ten-year in­no­cent slaugh­tered by some an­i­mal. The call by Tecia Hen­ry's moth­er for an apol­o­gy, sup­port­ed by the peo­ple of John John, has been com­plete­ly ig­nored. How could so many peo­ple have sat silent­ly in Ch­aguara­mas Con­ven­tion Cen­tre or, per­haps, even ap­plaud­ed this state­ment?

These can­not be mem­bers of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty that, by de­f­i­n­i­tion, en­gages in de­bate and cen­sure where nec­es­sary. Rather, these are em­ploy­ees of a busi­ness (the most promi­nent and re­ward­ed of whom were in the front row) whose sole own­er is seen as vin­dic­tive and not to be con­tra­dict­ed. Not even dis­si­dent Kei­th Row­ley has joined the John John com­mu­ni­ty in call­ing on Man­ning to apol­o­gise.

The three "stars" nec­es­sary for gen­uine, grass-roots-based con­sti­tu­tion re­form to be re­alised are, there­fore, get­ting close to a per­fect align­ment, and await now on­ly the "ac­ci­dents" that pre­vail in his­to­ry to come to­geth­er. When that hap­pens, the is­sue of ref­er­en­dums and re­call would need to be lo­cat­ed with­in the larg­er PREP­TAR (2) prin­ci­ples of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance, of which more next week.