For­mer In­di­an vice pres­i­dent and chair­man of the In­di­an Up­per House, the Ra­jya Sab­ha, Venka­iah Naidu, said in his first speech as the Ra­jya Sab­ha chair­man in Au­gust 2017:

“If the rul­ing par­ty has pow­er, Op­po­si­tion must at least have its say. But at the end of the day, democ­ra­cy says that Op­po­si­tion must have its say and the Gov­ern­ment must have its way be­cause it is as per the man­date of the peo­ple.”

This is the norm for par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cies and it is no dif­fer­ent in T&T. Last Mon­day, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo told par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in her ad­dress at the open­ing of Par­lia­ment:

“First, I hope that there can be greater col­lab­o­ra­tion across the aisle, par­tic­u­lar­ly where leg­isla­tive and oth­er mea­sures de­signed to help us fight crime are con­cerned. The ur­gency is ob­vi­ous; the pain and the suf­fer­ing are un­bear­able. These alone should dri­ve par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to put aside their par­ty ri­val­ries, join hands across the aisle, and col­lab­o­rate on how to stem crime and crim­i­nal con­duct.”

This was a no­ble, but un­re­al­is­tic call. Our sys­tem of gov­ern­ment is based on a gov­ern­ment and an op­po­si­tion. As a con­se­quence, there must be di­vi­sive­ness in the Par­lia­ment. Re­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ment im­plies that it is the Gov­ern­ment that has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for pol­i­cy, not the Op­po­si­tion.

That does not mean to say that they can­not have di­a­logue. The re­al­i­ty is that in Par­lia­ment, the Gov­ern­ment’s ma­jor­i­ty will car­ry the day and the agen­da and timetable for Par­lia­ment is set by the Gov­ern­ment.

The very ar­chi­tec­ture of our Par­lia­ment, hav­ing re­cent­ly been re­built and re­fur­bished, con­tin­ues the tra­di­tion of hav­ing a con­fronta­tion­al style with gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion desks fac­ing each oth­er in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. In the Sen­ate, the same ar­chi­tec­ture is used with the in­de­pen­dent bench­es be­ing placed be­hind the Op­po­si­tion. There is no round­table, as ob­tains in oth­er par­lia­ments that up­hold pow­er shar­ing.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, for the open­ing of Par­lia­ment last Mon­day, the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors were placed on padded seats lo­cat­ed be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion which re­calls the tra­di­tion of cross­benchers in the House of Lords in the UK.

Un­like the UK, our up­per house is not equipped with the lev­el of in­de­pen­dence to have gov­ern­ment de­feats in the way in which this hap­pens with reg­u­lar­i­ty in the House of Lords. Be­tween the 2012-2013 ses­sion and the 2021-2022 ses­sion, there have been 454 de­feats for the Gov­ern­ment in the House of Lords. That can­not hap­pen here.

Our sen­a­tors have no se­cu­ri­ty of tenure as con­firmed by the re­vo­ca­tion of the ap­point­ment of four in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors by the Pres­i­dent fol­low­ing in the tra­di­tion of for­mer pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona in 2013. No rea­sons were giv­en as this is a dis­cre­tionary pow­er of the Pres­i­dent.

Reach­ing across the aisle in our Par­lia­ment is dan­ger­ous busi­ness for any par­lia­men­tar­i­an with­out the con­cur­rence of their par­ty cau­cus. In the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, there is the cross­ing-the-floor pro­vi­sion which can re­sult in an MP hav­ing their seat de­clared va­cant for not sup­port­ing their par­ty. In the Sen­ate, the task is much eas­i­er as the Pres­i­dent can sim­ply re­voke ap­point­ments on ei­ther the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter (for gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors) or the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion (for op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors).

Once the cau­cus agrees, there can be col­lab­o­ra­tion. The on­ly time when it is en­forced is when there is a need for spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty leg­is­la­tion. Even then, it is not guar­an­teed to pro­duce the best re­sults as oc­curred in 2006 when the PNM and the UNC col­lab­o­rat­ed to get a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion to change the way the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion is ap­point­ed and the way in which the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Po­lice are ap­point­ed. That process has failed.

The de­sire for hege­mon­ic dom­i­nance by whichev­er par­ty wins a ma­jor­i­ty of seats has baked in­to the cake the de­sire to ig­nore the Op­po­si­tion as ir­rel­e­vant. That is our po­lit­i­cal cul­ture. It will take con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form to cre­ate the con­di­tions for en­forced col­lab­o­ra­tion, not an un­re­al­is­tic ap­peal to “put aside their par­ty ri­val­ries, join hands across the aisle”, be­cause, at the end of the day, it is Cab­i­net and not Par­lia­ment that sets the pol­i­cy agen­da.

Since 2015 to now, the Op­po­si­tion has sup­port­ed the Gov­ern­ment on 23 pieces of leg­is­la­tion across the aisle. The prob­lems are much deep­er than the col­lab­o­ra­tion that has al­ready tak­en place.

Prof Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.