Dr Hamid Ghany

Re­cent­ly, the Sen­ate de­bat­ed a Pri­vate Mem­ber's Mo­tion moved by Sen­a­tor Sub­has Ramkhelawan on how to make Par­lia­ment more ef­fi­cient. The de­bate pro­duced some in­ter­est­ing com­ments from Sen­a­tors. How­ev­er, the is­sue of mak­ing Par­lia­ment more ef­fec­tive may have more to do with the pub­lic's per­cep­tion of Par­lia­ment, than the ways in which par­lia­men­tar­i­ans may seek to han­dle their in­ter­nal af­fairs. One of the mat­ters raised by Sen­a­tor Ramkhelawan was the ques­tion of hav­ing bench­marks for the mea­sure­ment of the ac­com­plish­ment of a gov­ern­ment's leg­isla­tive agen­da. Ever since the Throne Speech fell in­to dis­use af­ter the open­ing of the 1971 Par­lia­ment by Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al, Sir Solomon Ho­choy, which was fol­lowed by the change to a re­pub­li­can sta­tus in 1976 when the new Pres­i­dent El­lis Clarke read out a leg­isla­tive agen­da at the open­ing of Par­lia­ment on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1976, there has been no such item by which to mea­sure per­for­mance.

The Throne Speech (which has its roots in our monar­chi­cal past) is not an item on the par­lia­men­tary agen­da and so it is dif­fi­cult to mea­sure any lev­els of ac­com­plish­ment by any Gov­ern­ment in re­la­tion to their leg­isla­tive agen­da. In the Unit­ed King­dom, there is usu­al­ly a cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of Par­lia­ment in the au­tumn every year or right af­ter a gen­er­al elec­tion where Her Majesty the Queen will ride in state from Buck­ing­ham Palace to the Palace at West­min­ster to de­liv­er what is called the Gra­cious Ad­dress from the Throne. This is de­liv­ered in the House of Lords and, by con­ven­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er mem­bers of the House of Com­mons stand at the bar of the House of Lords to lis­ten.

The speech is writ­ten by the Prime Min­is­ter and read by the Queen on the ba­sis of pro­posed ac­tion to be tak­en by "My Gov­ern­ment." This is a clear ref­er­ence to Her Majesty's Gov­ern­ment against which there is Her Majesty's Loy­al Op­po­si­tion. Af­ter the Gra­cious Ad­dress is de­liv­ered it is de­bat­ed in the House of Com­mons and the Gov­ern­ment must get a ma­jor­i­ty vote in or­der to stay in of­fice. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Throne Speech, as it has been called, has come to be re­gard­ed as a colo­nial anachro­nism and af­ter the 1970 up­ris­ing it was used on­ly in 1971 and not for any of the re­main­ing ses­sions of that Par­lia­ment which stood dis­solved in 1976. The new re­pub­li­can Par­lia­ment in 1976 had the new Pres­i­dent re­fer­ring to "My Gov­ern­ment" and there was a de­bate on the Speech af­ter­wards.

How­ev­er, suc­ces­sive Pres­i­dents have used the oc­ca­sion of the State open­ing of Par­lia­ment to bring greet­ings or to make their own pro­nounce­ments about na­tion­al is­sues. The Prime Min­is­ter no longer writes a speech for the Head of State and there is no leg­isla­tive agen­da laid out for the in­for­ma­tion of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans or the pub­lic. This will re­quire some at­ten­tion if such bench­marks are deemed to be ap­pro­pri­ate for the mea­sure­ment of par­lia­men­tary busi­ness. An­oth­er area of con­cern has to do with the spe­cial de­part­men­tal com­mit­tees. In 1998/99, the six "wise men" came out in open dis­agree­ment with the pro­pos­al to have par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tees scru­ti­nise Ser­vice Com­mis­sions and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies and de­part­ments.

A ca­su­al read­ing of the news­pa­pers at that time would lead one to be­lieve that a dic­ta­tor­ship was bout to be set up. More than a decade lat­er, the pub­lic can see their MPs open­ly ques­tion­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials about their per­for­mance. This is a wel­come move in the di­rec­tion of trans­par­ent gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, the po­lit­i­cal de­mands of the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem are such that any strat­e­gy of de­lib­er­ate ab­sen­teeism by one side or the oth­er could cause these com­mit­tees to lose their quo­rum and there­by scut­tle any sit­ting of these com­mit­tees. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, these com­mit­tees should not have gov­ern­ment min­is­ters on them as it can blur the line be­tween the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers where par­lia­men­tary scruti­ny of the Ex­ec­u­tive is con­cerned.

In the West­min­ster sys­tem in the Unit­ed King­dom, there are hun­dreds of MPs avail­able for ser­vice on such com­mit­tees. In small Par­lia­ments such as ours, the is­sue of num­bers is a re­al chal­lenge. Par­lia­ment can be made more ef­fec­tive if these com­mit­tees were to be giv­en more re­sources and their mem­ber­ship ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ad­just­ed to ex­clude min­is­ters. The vex­ing is­sue of the quo­rum ought to be ad­dressed where­by it would be­come more dif­fi­cult for any group of per­sons to un­der­mine the sit­tings of the com­mit­tees if they were so mind­ed. As far as Par­lia­ment is con­cerned, there is the ques­tion of whether the Sen­ate will get its own cham­ber. Our two-cham­ber Par­lia­ment op­er­ates on the ba­sis of the two Hous­es of Par­lia­ment shar­ing one cham­ber.

This mat­ter is a long stand­ing one and with the pro­longed Red House ren­o­va­tions un­der­way and the Red House no longer go­ing to be used for the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, one hopes that the Sen­ate will get its own home and our Par­lia­ment will move up sev­er­al notch­es of func­tion­al­i­ty in the process. Such a move would al­low for the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate to sit si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly and al­so to have more sit­tings per week to ad­dress the peo­ple's busi­ness. More will be said on this top­ic on fu­ture oc­ca­sions.