Den­nis Pan­tin

My UWI col­league, Dr Hamid Ghany, is to be com­mend­ed for pub­lish­ing his own thoughts, in a book­let, on the his­to­ry of con­sti­tu­tion­al process­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go and as well, on Patrick Man­ning's draft con­sti­tu­tion for T&T. The book­let was launched on Oc­to­ber 12 at UWI's Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre. The one rec­om­men­da­tion I would make is to add to its ti­tle: "An In­ter­pre­ta­tion." Ghany has shared his own think­ing, which is wel­come and de­sir­able, but not every­one will agree ei­ther with his his­tor­i­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion or cer­tain­ly his views on the Man­ning draft. Less sat­is­fac­to­ry and more trou­bling was dis­cus­sion sub­se­quent to his pre­sen­ta­tion at the Oc­to­ber 12 launch.

Ghany, on his own ad­mis­sion, spoke for 70 of the 90-minute ses­sion. One of the first ques­tions from the floor on Oc­to­ber 12 chal­lenged this. Ghany ex­plained that this was the pub­lic launch of his book­let. This is con­sis­tent with the UWI in­ter­nal in­tra-net in­vi­ta­tion: it is not with news­pa­per and ra­dio ad­ver­tise­ments which in­vit­ed the pub­lic both to the book­let launch and the first na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion on the Man­ning con­sti­tu­tion. I ac­cept Ghany's ex­pla­na­tion; it would be oth­er­wise dis­turb­ing that he would hog the time. This, how­ev­er, begs the ques­tion: who is in charge of the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions?

The au­thor of the so-called "work­ing doc­u­ment" al­so was a re­cur­ring ques­tion at the launch. "So-called" since Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form Fo­rum (CRF) mem­ber, Michael Theodore, him­self a lawyer, point­ed out (at the Sep­tem­ber 24 last Re­pub­lic Day Con­fer­ence of the civ­il so­ci­ety coali­tion of T&T) that the term is a mis­nomer, since the doc­u­ment in struc­ture, lan­guage and con­tent is a draft con­sti­tu­tion: the same as the two pri­or pro­posed con­sti­tu­tions of re­cent times, known to have been au­thored by El­lis Clarke and the Prin­ci­ples of Fair­ness group (POFG), re­spec­tive­ly. Ghany's re­sponse was that he on­ly be­came a mem­ber of the se­cret Man­ning Round­table on Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form in Jan­u­ary, 2008.

But the draft was made pub­lic in Jan­u­ary, 2009, a year lat­er! The au­thor­ship was not claimed by Man­ning him­self in tabling of the doc­u­ment in Par­lia­ment on Jan­u­ary 6, 2009. I have my­self con­clud­ed that the au­thor could on­ly be him and re­fer to it as the Man­ning draft con­sti­tu­tion. Will Ghany re­peat in­sult of Ryan/La­Guerre pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions? One ques­tion re­peat­ed­ly asked at the launch was why the re­port of the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions, chaired by Pro­fes­sors Sel­wyn Ryan and John La Guerre, on the Clarke and POFG con­sti­tu­tions has not been pub­li­cised? Par­tic­i­pants in this ear­li­er con­sul­ta­tions are le­git­i­mate­ly in­censed and in­sult­ed by its non-pub­li­ca­tion, since this would con­firm the ex­tent to which their views were tak­en in­to ac­count.

This out­rage is deep­ened by the fact that the lat­est Man­ning draft ig­nores ma­jor pro­pos­als made in these ear­li­er pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions, in­clud­ing on the right to ref­er­en­dum and re­call and di­rect elec­tion of chief na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive, whether pres­i­dent or prime min­is­ter. Ghany ex­pressed in­no­cence as to whether there was such a re­port, and there­fore on why it had not been made pub­lic. The larg­er ques­tion begged is whether Ghany al­so does not in­tend to pub­licly re­port on the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions which he is chair­ing? In his re­sponse, Ghany seemed to sig­nal that he was do­ing a re­port for "the Gov­ern­ment," and that was it.

If this is so then, as an aca­d­e­m­ic, he has a du­ty to in­form peo­ple who may be think­ing of par­tic­i­pat­ing in their con­sul­ta­tions that their sug­ges­tions are nev­er go­ing to see the light in any ex­plic­it re­port. I have con­firmed with Sel­wyn Ryan that they were not aware that their re­port was not go­ing to be pub­li­cised. I then sug­gest­ed that they pub­lish it. Ryan's re­sponse was that there had been no pub­lic clam­our for pub­li­ca­tion. I dis­agree. The re­peat­ed ques­tion (where is the re­port?) is a loud call for its pub­li­ca­tion. As two pro­fes­sors emer­i­tus of UWI, they have an im­por­tant eth­i­cal oblig­a­tion to set an ex­am­ple of ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour.

How will Ghany achieve ob­jec­tiv­i­ty?

Fi­nal­ly, Hamid Ghany has very strong views on both the con­sti­tu­tion process and the Man­ning draft, as record­ed in his book­let. Fair enough. How is he go­ing to, how­ev­er, achieve bal­ance and "ob­jec­tiv­i­ty" if, as I am cer­tain, oth­ers hold di­a­met­ri­cal­ly-op­posed in­ter­pre­ta­tions to his? Cer­tain­ly, the (CRF) does on the very process it­self. How is he go­ing to re­flect this in the con­sul­ta­tion process and his own re­port?

Equal­ly, how is he, as one per­son, go­ing to chair all of these meet­ings and keep track of all of the con­tri­bu­tions? Ghany men­tioned tap­ing, but there re­mains the ques­tion of tran­scrip­tion and analy­sis/group­ing of like con­tri­bu­tions, etc. (NB: as is eth­i­cal­ly ap­pro­pri­ate, I have pro­vid­ed both Ghany and Ryan with ad­vance copies of this ar­ti­cle)