Dou­glas Mendes

The Sen­ate com­pris­es 31 peo­ple, 16 of whom are se­lect­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter, six by the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, and nine by the Pres­i­dent in his own dis­cre­tion. To be qual­i­fied to be ap­point­ed to the Sen­ate, a per­son must be a cit­i­zen of T&T and aged 25 or above.

A per­son is dis­qual­i­fied if he or she is a cit­i­zen of an­oth­er coun­try, is a mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, is bank­rupt, men­tal­ly ill, un­der sen­tence of death, serv­ing a term of im­pris­on­ment ex­ceed­ing 12 months, con­vict­ed of an of­fence re­lat­ing to an elec­tion or not qual­i­fied to be reg­is­tered as an elec­tor in par­lia­men­tary elec­tions.

These qual­i­fi­ca­tions and dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tions ap­ply to all sen­a­tors equal­ly. In re­la­tion to those sen­a­tors se­lect­ed by the Pres­i­dent, the on­ly lim­i­ta­tion pro­vid­ed for un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion is that they must be "out­stand­ing per­sons" be­long­ing to "eco­nom­ic or so­cial or com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er ma­jor fields of en­deav­our."

There is pro­hi­bi­tion against the Pres­i­dent's sen­a­tors be­ing mem­bers of or af­fil­i­at­ed to a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, whether of the Gov­ern­ment or the Op­po­si­tion, far less that he or she should have no po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ence or lean­ings.

It is al­so sig­nif­i­cant that the nine sen­a­tors se­lect­ed by the Pres­i­dent are not re­ferred to in the Con­sti­tu­tion as "In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors," nor are they re­quired by the Con­sti­tu­tion to be "in­de­pen­dent", what­ev­er mean­ing one may wish to put on that word.

Nev­er­the­less, we ex­pect the Pres­i­dent's sen­a­tors to act in­de­pen­dent­ly, by which we mean that they are ex­pect­ed to make their con­tri­bu­tions in the Sen­ate and to cast their votes in ac­cor­dance with what they in­di­vid­u­al­ly con­sid­er to be the right thing to do, and not be­cause of some pre­de­ter­mined predilec­tion for ei­ther the Gov­ern­ment or the Op­po­si­tion.

He or she is not to be an­oth­er mouth­piece or con­duit of any of the con­tend­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties in Par­lia­ment. Al­though not find­ing any ex­pres­sion in the Con­sti­tu­tion, one might say that this is one of its un­writ­ten prin­ci­ples.

This does not mean that in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are not ex­pect­ed to have de­vel­oped views which hap­pen to co­in­cide with the think­ing of the Gov­ern­ment or the Op­po­si­tion. Nei­ther does it mean that they are not to favour one par­ty over an­oth­er in an elec­tion. You do not re­lin­quish your con­sti­tu­tion­al right to your own po­lit­i­cal views be­cause you sit on the in­de­pen­dent Sen­ate bench­es. It does mean that they are ex­pect­ed to bring to bear on pro­ceed­ings in Par­lia­ment the wealth of their own per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ences and to ap­proach each is­sue they are called up­on grap­ple with, with the sole goal of fur­ther­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est and not that of the po­lit­i­cal par­ty they might tend to pre­fer for the time be­ing. And it does mean that there must be oc­ca­sions when they will part com­pa­ny with their par­ty of choice when their con­science tells them to do so. In that re­gard, they are un­like sen­a­tors ap­point­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion who are ex­pect­ed to tow the par­ty line.

So does that mean that an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor who ac­cepts an ap­point­ment to a state board or en­ter­prise has some­how be­trayed his or her in­de­pen­dence as a sen­a­tor or has pro­vid­ed proof that she was not in­de­pen­dent af­ter all dur­ing her term in of­fice? The Leader of the Op­po­si­tion seems to think so.

She ap­pears to be­lieve that any­one who heeds the call to serve the pub­lic in an of­fi­cial ca­pac­i­ty must be a diehard sup­port­er of the rul­ing par­ty.

Un­wit­ting­ly, she has opened a win­dow to her phi­los­o­phy of gov­er­nance. It is not a pret­ty sight. It is a phi­los­o­phy borne of the be­lief that the spoils of an elec­tion are for the rul­ing par­ty's sup­port­ers on­ly. It is on­ly devo­tees of the ris­ing sun who are to be ap­point­ed to state boards, whether they are qual­i­fied or not. It is on­ly lawyers who are loy­al to the Peo­ples Part­ner­ship who are to be giv­en state briefs.

So in­grained is this world view in her psy­che, so nat­ur­al does it ap­pear to her that the state's largesse is to be re­served for her par­ty's lack­eys, that she projects her val­ue sys­tem on­to all oth­ers.

So, to her way of think­ing, He­len Dray­ton could not pos­si­bly have been in­de­pen­dent af­ter all be­cause she has now ac­cept­ed the Prime Min­is­ter's in­vi­ta­tion to chair CN­MG's Board.

This is not sim­ply an ap­proach to gov­er­nance which is bor­der­line un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, it is al­so short sight­ed and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Re­strict­ing the pool of tal­ent from which a gov­ern­ment will se­lect those who will serve on state boards or would oth­er­wise ben­e­fit from state con­tracts to par­ty sup­port­ers on­ly, pun­ish­es those who choose to ex­er­cise their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a po­lit­i­cal view dif­fer­ent to the rul­ing par­ty, and de­prives the Gov­ern­ment po­ten­tial­ly of bet­ter qual­i­fied pa­tri­ots will­ing to as­sist in run­ning the coun­try. It is a phi­los­o­phy of gov­er­nance des­tined to di­vide, not unite, to alien­ate, not in­te­grate.

When the Gov­ern­ment changed in 2010, there was a full-scale cam­paign launched to rid the state sec­tor of every and any­one per­ceived to be sym­pa­thet­ic to the PNM. Many peo­ple spoke open­ly of eth­nic cleans­ing. This Gov­ern­ment must not re­spond in kind. The Prime Min­ster has pledged to gov­ern for all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans. Let's hold him to that promise. He­len Dray­ton's ap­point­ment is a good start.