Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed has weighed in on the is­sue re­gard­ing the process in­volved in Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's with­draw­al from of­fice. He says the re­place­ment of Row­ley as the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) leader is sep­a­rate and apart, rest­ing sole­ly in the do­main of the PNM, and has noth­ing to do with ref­er­ence to Sec­tion 76 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Mo­hammed did so yes­ter­day, as he not­ed oth­er analy­ses of the sit­u­a­tion by po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Hamid Ghany and Lar­ry Lal­la SC.

Mo­hammed not­ed ref­er­ences to Sec­tion 76 (1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which states: "Where there is oc­ca­sion for the ap­point­ment of a Prime Min­is­ter, the Pres­i­dent shall ap­point as Prime Min­is­ter –

(a) A mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who is the Leader in that House of the par­ty which com­mands the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers of the House; or

(b) Where it ap­pears to him that that par­ty does not have an undis­put­ed leader in that House or that no par­ty com­mands the sup­port of such a ma­jor­i­ty, the mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who, in his judge­ment, is most like­ly to com­mand the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of the mem­bers of that House."

Mo­hammed said, “The im­mi­nent an­nounce­ment by Dr Row­ley of the ac­tu­al date of his with­draw­al from of­fice as Prime Min­is­ter has sparked wide­spread spec­u­la­tion and pro­nounce­ments about the process that will be fol­lowed and the con­se­quences re­sult­ing there­from. Both Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany and Se­nior Coun­sel Lar­ry Lal­la have prof­fered some in­ter­est­ing views, one dif­fer­ing sub­stan­tial­ly with the oth­er.

“Prof. Ghany fore­sees the de­vel­op­ment of a co­nun­drum con­se­quent to Dr Row­ley demit­ting of­fice as Prime Min­is­ter and con­tin­u­ing to re­tain the po­si­tion of PNM's po­lit­i­cal leader. He views such a sit­u­a­tion as anom­alous and not in con­for­mi­ty with the pro­vi­sions of Sec­tion 76 of the Con­sti­tu­tion here­in­above men­tioned. He sug­gests that the Con­sti­tu­tion's framers didn't cater for the 'pos­si­bil­i­ty of two dif­fer­ent per­sons hold­ing the of­fices of par­ty leader and Prime Min­is­ter in cas­es where the par­ty leader leads a par­ty with a ma­jor­i­ty.' He con­clud­ed that in his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of S.76 (1) b, the Pres­i­dent would be hard-pressed to ap­point Stu­art Young un­less Dr Row­ley si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly va­cates both of­fices.”

Mo­hammed con­tin­ued, “Lar­ry Lal­la po­lite­ly dis­agrees with Prof. Ghany. He ad­vances a lit­er­al in­ter­pre­ta­tion to Sec­tion 76 and ex­plains how it un­rav­els in its or­di­nary and nat­ur­al mean­ing to give ef­fect to the man­age­ment of the sit­u­a­tion by the Pres­i­dent of the task at hand. He ar­gues that it is pub­lic knowl­edge that all mem­bers of the House in the rul­ing par­ty, have con­sol­i­dat­ed their votes of sup­port for Young by way of un­dat­ed let­ters which they have all al­leged­ly signed. He con­cludes that if and when Dr Row­ley demits the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter, even if he con­tin­ues as par­ty leader, Young would cer­tain­ly be 'a mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who is the Leader in that House of the par­ty which com­mands the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers of that House, thus sat­is­fy­ing the re­quire­ments of S.76 1(a)."

Mo­hammed not­ed that on a re­vis­it, Ghany, in a sec­ond ar­ti­cle, stood his ground and prof­fered fur­ther re­search ma­te­r­i­al to bol­ster his orig­i­nal po­si­tion af­ter due con­sid­er­a­tion of Lal­la’s po­si­tion.

Mo­hammed not­ed that Ghany opined the fol­low­ing: “‘In re­spect­ful­ly dis­agree­ing with Se­nior Coun­sel, I fear that in­ter­pre­ta­tion sug­gests that Dr Row­ley would have ren­dered him­self pow­er­less at the hands of his fel­low MPs and fu­ture prime min­is­ters ap­point­ed un­der this sub­sec­tion could be­come the sub­ject of po­lit­i­cal coups if their MPs were to gang up in the House against their par­ty leader to re­move him/her as Prime Min­is­ter’.”

But Mo­hammed added, “With due re­spect to the learned pro­fes­sor, such a view is far-fetched and per­haps some­what alarmist. A Prime Min­is­ter has at his sole dis­cre­tion at all times the fa­cil­i­ty of S.68(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion to ar­rest any re­bel­lion with­in the ranks of gov­ern­ment, per­ceived or re­al, by in­vok­ing same.

"It reads thus: 'The Pres­i­dent, act­ing in ac­cor­dance with the Prime Min­is­ter, may at any time pro­rogue or dis­solve Par­lia­ment'."

Mo­hammed con­tin­ued, "In our lo­cal set­ting, the im­petu­ous Bas­deo Pan­day, af­ter be­ing prime min­is­ter for one year, in 2001, for no good rea­son, in­voked this sec­tion and even­tu­al­ly lost gov­ern­ment af­ter a pre­ma­ture elec­tion. At the moth­er of all Par­lia­ments in the Unit­ed King­dom, there was a tu­mul­tuous five years, 2019 to 2024 which saw three prime min­is­ters in one par­lia­men­tary term as fol­lows: Boris John­son 2019-2022, Liz Truss 2022 and Rishi Sunak 2022-2024.

“These changes took place in tan­dem with the then rul­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty mak­ing its own ad­just­ments with­out ma­jor con­flicts or dis­qui­et."

Mo­hammed added, "Lal­la, in giv­ing a lib­er­al in­ter­pre­ta­tion to Sec­tion 76, ex­pects that the Pres­i­dent will have suf­fi­cient da­ta to ap­point Young af­ter no­ti­fi­ca­tion by Dr Row­ley and that Young would cer­tain­ly be 'a mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who is the Leader in that House of the par­ty which com­mands the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers of that House', thus sat­is­fy­ing the re­quire­ments of S. 76 1(a). Lal­la’s rea­son­ing seems log­i­cal and with­out fault."

Mo­hammed said Ghany con­tin­ues to fo­cus and over-em­pha­sise the role of the "leader of the rul­ing par­ty" in his ar­gu­ments, whilst on the oth­er hand Sec­tion 76 seems to ac­cen­tu­ate the "leader in the House."

"Noth­ing in that sec­tion refers to leader of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. Wher­ev­er leader is used, it's in ref­er­ence to the House. Cu­mu­la­tive­ly, it’s a leader in ‘that House' and mem­bers of 'that House' who are the re­al play­ers in the ex­er­cise. Nowhere is men­tion made of 'par­ty' sep­a­rate­ly or out­side of that House," Mo­hammed said.

“The Pres­i­dent, in her dis­cre­tion and in con­sul­ta­tion with oth­ers, will have suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to make the ap­point­ment and to fa­cil­i­tate a smooth tran­si­tion, thus con­clud­ing that the framers of the Con­sti­tu­tion nev­er in­tend­ed for po­lit­i­cal par­ties to fea­ture in any di­rect way in what seems to be sole­ly a mat­ter with­in the am­bit of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. This al­so avoids the Pres­i­dent hav­ing to in­ter­face in any way with po­lit­i­cal par­ties in this in­stance."

Mo­hammed re­it­er­at­ed that the re­place­ment of Row­ley as PNM leader is sep­a­rate and apart, rest­ing sole­ly in the do­main of that par­ty and has noth­ing to do with ref­er­ence to Sec­tion 76.

"Of course, it would have been less com­pli­cat­ed if Young’s suc­ces­sor­ship as leader of the par­ty pre­ced­ed the Pres­i­dent’s in­ter­ven­tion but it's clear­ly not a de­ter­ring fac­tor," he con­clud­ed.