To hear Bas­deo Pan­day say it, the source of vir­tu­al­ly all so­cial and eco­nom­ic prob­lems is that damn 1976 Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion. The same doc­u­ment, by the way, that per­mit­ted his six-year ad­min­is­tra­tion to be­come "the best gov­ern­ment in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go." No longer is a wretched Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment be­ing blamed for crime, floods, traf­fic snarls etc, but, in­stead, the fault has be­come our 33-year-old gov­ern­ing law. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is sim­i­lar­ly con­vinced, to the point that he se­cret­ly picked a high-pow­ered team to draft no few­er than 11 ver­sions of a new con­sti­tu­tion and has un­der­tak­en a road show to sell the virtues of his pack­age.

Man­ning and Pan­day have held a rare meet­ing–not to dis­cuss the al­most 500 mur­ders this year!–to plan the way for­ward for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. And every­where these have be­come vogue buzz­words, cheap­ly par­rot­ed by par­ti­sans on both sides as the prime ex­cuse for the ab­ject state of gov­er­nance and a stag­nant so­ci­ety. More than that, Man­ning has spon­sored a tour­ing par­ty of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ists, who are at­tract­ing em­bar­rass­ing sin­gle dig­it turnouts at town hall-type meet­ings. Maybe cit­i­zens are more con­cerned about bread-and-but­ter is­sues or are afraid for their se­cu­ri­ty in ven­tur­ing out to these talks.??

There is al­so a hand­ful of civ­il so­ci­ety as­sem­blage on the sub­ject, uni­ver­si­ty aca­d­e­mics and NGO ac­tivists bleat­ing to no one in par­tic­u­lar about why the na­tion­al con­sti­tu­tion must be ur­gent­ly re­formed. But no re­formist has ex­plained to us sim­ple folks what is so dread­ful­ly wrong with the cur­rent arrange­ment of na­tion­al laws that has gov­erned and guid­ed our lives for most of our years of po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence. No ad­vo­cate has told T&T how a re­vamped con­sti­tu­tion would en­sure that a gov­ern­ment would eq­ui­tably pri­ori­tise its spend­ing, al­lo­cat­ing funds to end the grind­ing pover­ty suf­fered by some 250,000 na­tion­als, in­stead of erect­ing show­piece struc­tures in the cap­i­tal city.

There has been no ex­pla­na­tion on how the crime epi­dem­ic and health woes would be curbed through the elec­tion of an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent and in­stal­la­tion of a re­vised con­sti­tu­tion. No cru­sad­er for the cause has clar­i­fied how an over­hauled pack­age of laws would re­duce the traf­fic crawl across the coun­try, end prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, and zap drug traf­fick­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing. No one in au­thor­i­ty seems to have tak­en note of the point lu­cid­ly stat­ed by le­gal lu­mi­nary Ken­neth Lal­la that "the cur­rent chaot­ic state of the na­tion can­not be at­trib­uted to the de­fi­cien­cies or fault of the Con­sti­tu­tion, but rather to those elect­ed to gov­ern." To be sure, the con­sti­tu­tion re­form cam­paign earnest­ly be­gan short­ly af­ter Pan­day con­spired against him­self in 2001, vest­ing au­thor­i­ty for the ap­point­ment of a prime min­is­ter to a pres­i­dent against whom he had led a pitched pub­lic bat­tle.

In the clear­est ex­am­ple yet of the ir­rel­e­vance of the con­sti­tu­tion re­form de­bate, then-Pres­i­dent Arthur Robin­son reached for the pre­am­ble of the doc­u­ment–not any spe­cif­ic le­gal pro­vi­sion!–to ease Pan­day out of the prime min­is­ter's res­i­dence. By their re­spec­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in the reck­less shindig, Robin­son, Man­ning and Pan­day hi­jacked the Con­sti­tu­tion and made a mock­ery of gov­er­nance and the na­tion­al so­ci­ety. Pan­day had al­so been sour about an 18-18 elec­toral dead­lock, an im­passe that would not re­turn–not be­cause of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form–as a re­sult of the sim­ple ad­di­tion of three vot­ing dis­tricts. In a land in which peo­ple like their lead­ers to think for them, there has been no crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of the prime macro pro­pos­als of our po­lit­i­cal boss­es.

What dif­fer­ence, re­al­ly, would an ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­cy make to the qual­i­ty of our dai­ly lives, as we strug­gle to pay bills and con­front both traf­fic and crim­i­nals? Pan­day has been tout­ing a sys­tem of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, ig­nor­ing how PR has bad­ly frac­tured near­by Guyana, to the point that Afros are whin­ing about state dis­crim­i­na­tion and group dom­i­na­tion the way In­dos did un­der Forbes Burn­ham's tor­tu­ous rule. In the con­sti­tu­tion­al mi­lieu, there is a lob­by for di­rect democ­ra­cy–man­i­fest­ed in ref­er­en­dums etc–in place of the cur­rent par­tic­i­pa­to­ry type. Drafters of the US Con­sti­tu­tion 200-plus years ago had re­ject­ed this va­ri­ety, fear­ing it would lead to de­ci­sions based up­on emo­tion and ir­ra­tional­i­ty.

In­stead, they an­tic­i­pat­ed that elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, sober­ly gath­ered in a cham­ber, would de­bate poli­cies and pro­grammes and reach a con­sen­su­al agree­ment in the peo­ple's in­ter­est. Our con­sti­tu­tion­al framers, too, did not fore­cast that in Par­lia­ment the Op­po­si­tion would have its lone­ly say and the Gov­ern­ment would in­evitably have its mer­ry way. How, there­fore, would the "mac­co" uni­cam­er­al Par­lia­ment be­ing hyped by Pan­day and oth­ers en­sure that the views of the po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion would be se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­ered and en­ter­tained? Where are the in­her­ent checks and bal­ances in this sys­tem? For his part, Man­ning has been damn­ing the en­trenched sys­tem of ser­vice com­mis­sions, but when his gov­ern­ment sum­mar­i­ly axed Stephen Williams, the nom­i­nee for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, it wasn't the sys­tem at fault.

In­stead, an ad­min­is­tra­tion that bla­tant­ly usurps pow­er from var­i­ous in­de­pen­dent agen­cies was cul­pa­ble. Wit­ness, for ex­am­ple, how the Man­ning Gov­ern­ment has hired Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty at a stag­ger­ing $4.6 mil­lion to head-hunt for a new top cop, ca­su­al­ly ig­nor­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion's role. Note how the Gov­ern­ment side­stepped re­spec­tive ser­vice com­mis­sions in putting the po­lit­i­cal hex on Mar­lene Coudray, De­vant Ma­haraj and oth­ers and in de­clin­ing to pro­mote sev­er­al de­serv­ing of­fi­cers. Ob­serve the use of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars to fund po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns, with­hold­ing of vi­tal fi­nan­cial de­tails through tight­en­ing of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, and the sidelin­ing of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion.

Scru­ti­nise Man­ning's ma­noeu­vre to set up a Min­istry of Jus­tice, os­ten­si­bly to pro­vide more re­sources to the ju­di­cia­ry, when the al­lo­ca­tion of greater fund­ing to the Chief Jus­tice would do the job. The cold re­al­i­ty is that T&T ur­gent­ly needs lead­ers com­mit­ted to eq­ui­table na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, sen­si­tive to the cries of the dis­placed and com­pe­tent and far-sight­ed to in­tro­duce mea­sures to im­prove the qual­i­ty of our lives. We re­quire lead­ers who re­spond to the cries of the com­mon man and who have a grit­ty de­ter­mi­na­tion to prop­er­ly utilise our re­sources to boost our col­lec­tive wel­fare. That does not re­quire con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form!