PROF HAMID GHANY

hamid.ghany@sta.uwi.edu

Twen­ty-five years af­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Con­sti­tu­tion was amend­ed to pe­nalise any MP for re­sign­ing from, or be­ing ex­pelled by, the po­lit­i­cal par­ty on whose tick­et they were elect­ed, the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment adopt­ed the Com­mon­wealth (La­timer House) Prin­ci­ples at their meet­ing in Abu­ja. In the An­nex, the fol­low­ing is re­cit­ed on page 19 un­der the head­ing “Pre­serv­ing the In­de­pen­dence of Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans”–

“2.  Se­cu­ri­ty of mem­bers dur­ing their par­lia­men­tary term is fun­da­men­tal to par­lia­men­tary in­de­pen­dence and there­fore:

(a) the ex­pul­sion of mem­bers from Par­lia­ment as a penal­ty for leav­ing their par­ties (floor-cross­ing) should be viewed as a pos­si­ble in­fringe­ment of mem­bers’ in­de­pen­dence; an­ti-de­fec­tion mea­sures may be nec­es­sary for some ju­ris­dic­tions to deal with cor­rupt prac­tices;

(b) laws al­low­ing for the re­call of mem­bers dur­ing their elect­ed term should be viewed with cau­tion, as a po­ten­tial threat to the in­de­pen­dence of mem­bers;

(c) the ces­sa­tion of mem­ber­ship of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty of it­self should not lead to the loss of a mem­ber’s seat.” [Com­mon­wealth (La­timer House) Prin­ci­ples on the Three Branch­es of Gov­ern­ment, An­nex, No­vem­ber 2003, p 19].

With last Mon­day's res­ig­na­tion of 16 mem­bers of the PDP who are mem­bers of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), these prin­ci­ples and this mat­ter now col­lide. The Com­mon­wealth, 19 years ago, clear­ly adopt­ed the po­si­tion that the par­ty al­le­giance of any elect­ed mem­ber can be changed af­ter their elec­tion and such elect­ed mem­bers should not be pe­nalised for mak­ing such a change.

This sit­u­a­tion is not new to the THA, as dur­ing the term of of­fice of the 1996-2000 THA both Richard Al­fred (Ply­mouth/Gold­en Lane) and Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore (Black Rock/Whim) re­signed from the NAR and de­clared them­selves in­de­pen­dent. They joined Deb­o­rah Moore-Mig­gins who had won the Bethel/Pa­tience Hill seat run­ning as an in­de­pen­dent.

There was no is­sue as re­gards them hav­ing to be re­moved from their seats be­cause of their change of po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance. Out of this sit­u­a­tion was born the Peo­ple’s Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) in To­ba­go with Deb­o­rah Moore-Mig­gins as the leader.

There has been a fair amount of com­men­tary over the is­sue of these res­ig­na­tions and some com­men­ta­tors have sought to make link­ages be­tween the Stand­ing Or­ders of the THA and the Stand­ing Or­ders of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

This line of ar­gu­ment was pur­sued in Jan­u­ary 2021 when there was a 6-6 tie in or­der to seek guid­ance on how to break the tie and have a Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer elect­ed. The Clerk of the As­sem­bly did not go that route and the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment amend­ed the THA Act 1996 in or­der to change the num­ber of seats from 12 to 15 to per­mit the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) to draw new bound­aries for the THA elec­tions that fol­lowed.

All the while, the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil of the THA for the 2017-2021 term that end­ed in Jan­u­ary 2021 held of­fice and dis­charged the busi­ness of the THA un­til the elec­tions were held in De­cem­ber 2021.

It will be use­ful to un­der­stand how the 1978 Cross­ing-the-Floor amend­ment to our Con­sti­tu­tion came about.

It emerged out of an at­tempt by Dr Er­ic Williams to re­quire all PNM can­di­dates for the 1976 gen­er­al elec­tion to sign an un­dat­ed let­ter of res­ig­na­tion as an MP and give it to him as a pre-con­di­tion to be­ing se­lect­ed as a PNM can­di­date. This was re­ject­ed by Karl Hud­son-Phillips, and he was not se­lect­ed as a PNM can­di­date in 1976.

How­ev­er, Williams took the mat­ter fur­ther and the PNM man­i­festo for the 1976 gen­er­al elec­tion in­clud­ed the fol­low­ing pledge:

“PNM pledges to pro­vide ex­pe­di­tious­ly for an ap­pro­pri­ate con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment re­quir­ing an elect­ed Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment to va­cate his seat in the event he ceas­es to sup­port, or be sup­port­ed by, the par­ty to which he be­longed when he was elect­ed.” (PNM Man­i­festo Gen­er­al Elec­tions 1976, p 4).

The mo­ment for such a con­sti­tu­tion­al change ar­rived on March 31, 1978, when Hec­tor Mc Clean re­signed from the Williams Cab­i­net, de­clared him­self an in­de­pen­dent and re­nounced any signed and un­dat­ed let­ter that he had hith­er­to signed. On the same day, Raf­fique Shah, re­signed as leader of the Op­po­si­tion af­ter he had re­placed Bas­deo Pan­day in that of­fice in 1977 fol­low­ing a split in the Unit­ed Labour Front (ULF).

That cre­at­ed an ur­gent need to have the Con­sti­tu­tion amend­ed and Williams met with the re-ap­point­ed leader of the Op­po­si­tion Bas­deo Pan­day who him­self al­so had chal­lenges in­side the ULF be­cause of the split in the par­ty with Shah.

Williams was able to get the sup­port of Pan­day and some of his col­leagues to en­act Act No 15 of 1978 which they all thought re­quired a three-fourths ma­jor­i­ty in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty in the Sen­ate. How­ev­er, many years lat­er in the case of Mc Leod v At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go [1984] 1 WLR 522 that ar­gu­ment was de­bunked by the Privy Coun­cil, and it was con­firmed that on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty was re­quired.

The PNM had suc­cess­ful­ly in­tro­duced a mea­sure that had its gen­e­sis in the dis­pute be­tween Karl Hud­son-Phillips and Williams and was fur­ther height­ened in the fears caused by the res­ig­na­tion of Hec­tor Mc Clean who de­clared him­self in­de­pen­dent. Williams knew very well that there were five oth­er back­benchers who had been re-elect­ed as MPs whom he did not sup­port (Carl­ton Gomes, Brens­ley Bar­row, Sham Mo­hammed, Vic­tor Camp­bell and Li­onel Robin­son) and he was un­cer­tain what a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence could bring be­cause of the ob­vi­ous dis­af­fec­tion be­tween him and them.

That mea­sure was on­ly ever used once in the case of the late Her­bert Vol­ney who pub­licly re­signed from the UNC in 2013 af­ter the de­par­ture of Jack Warn­er from the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment. It had failed when Patrick Man­ning tried to use it in 1997 to re­move Ru­pert Grif­fith and Vin­cent Lasse af­ter they crossed the floor from the PNM to the UNC.

As far as To­ba­go is con­cerned, there is no par­al­lel with all of this as there is no cri­sis or vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in­volved in the op­er­a­tions of the THA. The prin­ci­ple of par­ty dom­i­na­tion over the lives of any­one elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives does not ex­tend to To­ba­go and the ac­tions of Far­ley Au­gus­tine and his col­leagues are con­sis­tent with the ac­tions of Richard Al­fred and Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore in the 1996-2000 THA term.

The Com­mon­wealth (La­timer House) Prin­ci­ples are very clear on pro­tect­ing the tenure of any elect­ed mem­ber if they should change their po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance. In pi­lot­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Bill in 1996, Min­is­ter Ex­tra­or­di­naire, ANR Robin­son, had this to say:

“…I think in re­la­tion to To­ba­go as a small is­land which is part of a larg­er unit, a uni­tary state, it is not nec­es­sary to have that hard and fast di­vi­sion along the West­min­ster lines.” (Hansard, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, No­vem­ber 26, 1996, p 73).

There was nev­er the in­ten­tion to mir­ror West­min­ster and there is no threat to democ­ra­cy in To­ba­go. The 1978 con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that in­tro­duced po­lit­i­cal penal­ties for elect­ed MPs who change their al­le­giance does not ap­ply to the THA. Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment agreed on the La­timer House Prin­ci­ples in 2003.