Three Com­mon­wealth Caribbean coun­tries have had con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form re­ports de­liv­ered this year, and all three of them have come down on the side of re­tain­ing the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem of gov­ern­ment.

Ex­tracts from the three re­ports con­vey these rec­om­men­da­tions as fol­lows: “5.1.7 Hav­ing care­ful­ly weighed the strengths and weak­ness­es of both sys­tems of gov­ern­ment, the CRC rec­om­mends that the par­lia­men­tary cab­i­net sys­tem be re­tained.” (Ja­maica: Re­port of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mit­tee, May 2024).

“5.102 The Cab­i­net should re­main col­lec­tive­ly re­spon­si­ble to Par­lia­ment but with an en­hanced regime of ac­count­abil­i­ty through Com­mit­tees and oth­er mech­a­nisms of over­sight.” (Trinidad and To­ba­go: Re­port of the Na­tion­al Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form, Ju­ly 2024).

“6.8. The Com­mis­sion rec­om­mends that the ex­ist­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions re­lat­ing to the Cab­i­net be re­tained and that ad­di­tion­al pro­vi­sion be made in the new con­sti­tu­tion for a Code of Con­duct for Min­is­ters and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­taries.” (Bar­ba­dos: Re­port of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mis­sion, Sep­tem­ber 2024).

In all three in­stances, the de­sire to re­tain the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem by hav­ing the Cab­i­net con­tin­ue to be col­lec­tive­ly re­spon­si­ble to Par­lia­ment is very clear. The re­form comes with pro­pos­als for the strength­en­ing of ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms which are in­tend­ed to im­pose on the Ex­ec­u­tive more de­mands of ac­count­abil­i­ty in the hope that the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture will change to al­low for greater trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Not much will change with these pro­pos­als as the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem has been hard­wired since in­de­pen­dence. Ac­cord­ing to Dr Er­ic Williams in an ad­dress, be­fore he be­came Chief Min­is­ter of T&T, in Wood­ford Square on Ju­ly 19, 1955:

“Ladies and Gen­tle­men, I sug­gest to you that the time has come when the British Con­sti­tu­tion, suit­ably mod­i­fied, can be ap­plied to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Af­ter all, if the British Con­sti­tu­tion is good enough for Great Britain, it should be good enough for Trinidad and To­ba­go.” (Er­ic Williams, Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Teach­ers’ Ed­u­ca­tion­al and Cul­tur­al As­so­ci­a­tion, Pub­lic Af­fairs Pam­phlet No 2, 1955).

Pre­mier Nor­man Man­ley told the Ja­maican House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Jan­u­ary 24, 1962: “Let us not make the mis­take of de­scrib­ing as colo­nial in­sti­tu­tions which are part and par­cel of the her­itage of this coun­try. If we have any con­fi­dence in our own in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty and our own per­son­al­i­ty we would ab­sorb these things and in­cor­po­rate them in­to our be­ing and turn them to our own use as part of the her­itage we are not ashamed of.” (Pro­ceed­ings of the Ja­maican House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives 1961-62, Jan­u­ary 24, 1962, p 766).

These words still res­onate to­day as their in­tent demon­strates the deep-seat­ed de­sire to re­tain the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem of the colo­nial pow­er, Great Britain. In the case of Williams, it was the adop­tion of a suit­ably mod­i­fied ver­sion of the British par­lia­men­tary sys­tem. In the case of Man­ley, it was the main­te­nance of the colo­nial evo­lu­tion­ary process of iden­ti­fy­ing the in­sti­tu­tions of the colo­nial era as be­long­ing to us and not to them.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, all three re­ports are de­ter­mined to keep the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem, and they make at­tempts to mod­i­fy it by us­ing tech­niques from the US pres­i­den­tial sys­tem to strength­en com­mit­tees, etc. The un­der­ly­ing re­al­i­ty is that the cur­rent con­sti­tu­tion re­form­ers have no de­sire to break from the colo­nial past and ush­er in a bold new ap­proach to do­ing busi­ness fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent­ly.

The hold of the British colo­nial in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work is very strong, and it is em­bed­ded in­to our psy­che as the on­ly way to gov­ern. The prospect of ef­fect­ing a gen­uine sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers be­tween the Ex­ec­u­tive and the Leg­is­la­ture, where­by the Ex­ec­u­tive can no longer con­trol the Par­lia­ment will not come with this lat­est round of con­sti­tu­tion re­forms.

Fun­da­men­tal sys­temic re­form will pass us by again. Our po­lit­i­cal cul­ture has been nur­tured to cling tena­cious­ly to the words of Williams and Man­ley to make the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem ours.

On the ju­di­cial side, there is a call for the adop­tion of the CCJ to com­plete “the cy­cle of in­de­pen­dence,” while on the Ex­ec­u­tive/leg­isla­tive side, there is the call to re­tain the colo­nial­ly in­spired par­lia­men­tary sys­tem.

Bar­ba­dos has the CCJ al­ready, while the cur­rent Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment does not want it, and the par­lia­men­tary arith­metic in T&T can­not be over­come be­tween the Gov­ern­ment, which wants it, and the Op­po­si­tion that does not.

Re­gard­less of all the im­port­ed US pres­i­den­tial tech­niques about over­sight com­mit­tees, there is still on­ly one vote for the elec­torate to choose the Par­lia­ment. The Ex­ec­u­tive will still be se­lect­ed from the leg­is­la­ture in­stead of the vot­ers hav­ing a sep­a­rate vote for the Ex­ec­u­tive. That would be re­al re­form that would break the colo­nial in­her­i­tance and end the re­al prime min­is­te­r­i­al “con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er” that ex­ists in the par­lia­men­tary sys­tem.

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