Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

UWI Pro­fes­sor of Com­mer­cial and En­vi­ron­men­tal Law Ra­jen­dra Ram­lo­gan is ques­tion­ing whether Trinidad and To­ba­go still needs an ap­point­ed Sen­ate, ar­gu­ing that it may be time to re­con­sid­er the sys­tem al­to­geth­er.

Ram­lo­gan, a for­mer chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, con­tends that af­ter 50 years as a Re­pub­lic, a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion is whether peo­ple should be al­lowed to make laws with­out be­ing elect­ed by the pop­u­la­tion.

“Per­haps the ques­tion is more el­e­men­tary. Why, in a democ­ra­cy, should any­one ap­point leg­is­la­tors at all?” Ram­lo­gan said in a com­men­tary ex­am­in­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments gov­ern­ing the Sen­ate.

His in­ter­ven­tion comes amid re­newed pub­lic de­bate over the role of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors fol­low­ing re­cent con­tro­ver­sy in the Up­per House.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar sub­se­quent­ly de­clared that her Gov­ern­ment would no longer en­ter­tain amend­ments from the In­de­pen­dent bench, while de­scrib­ing the sen­a­tors in high­ly crit­i­cal terms. The stance has trig­gered wider de­bate over the con­sti­tu­tion­al role of the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and their re­la­tion­ship with the Gov­ern­ment.

Ram­lo­gan not­ed that pro­pos­als to rad­i­cal­ly re­struc­ture Par­lia­ment are not new, point­ing to for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day’s sup­port for a uni­cam­er­al Par­lia­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 mem­bers elect­ed through pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, along with a Pres­i­dent elect­ed by the pop­u­la­tion.

He al­so not­ed that the Wood­ing Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion had con­sid­ered mov­ing away from the coun­try’s bi­cam­er­al par­lia­men­tary struc­ture in favour of a sin­gle leg­is­la­ture.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that sev­er­al sen­a­tors ap­point­ed to the In­de­pen­dent bench have demon­strat­ed in­de­pen­dence and made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to par­lia­men­tary de­bate, he said the qual­i­ty of in­di­vid­ual ap­pointees does not set­tle the wider con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­lo­gan, a con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem should not have to de­pend on the per­son­al qual­i­ties of those se­lect­ed to make it work.

Cen­tral to his crit­i­cism is the fact that none of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 31 sen­a­tors are di­rect­ly elect­ed to the Sen­ate.

He con­trast­ed that arrange­ment with Guyana, where mem­bers of the 65-seat Na­tion­al As­sem­bly are elect­ed un­der a sys­tem of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Ram­lo­gan al­so ques­tioned the in­sti­tu­tion­al ba­sis for de­scrib­ing the nine pres­i­den­tial ap­pointees as “in­de­pen­dent”, point­ing to the wider con­sti­tu­tion­al process through which the Pres­i­dent is se­lect­ed.

He is al­so chal­leng­ing the ter­mi­nol­o­gy it­self.

He point­ed out that Sec­tion 40 of the Con­sti­tu­tion does not use the term “In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor”. In­stead, it pro­vides for nine sen­a­tors to be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent, act­ing in the Pres­i­dent’s dis­cre­tion, from out­stand­ing peo­ple in eco­nom­ic, so­cial or com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er ma­jor fields of en­deav­our.

Ram­lo­gan ar­gues that the de­scrip­tion “In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor” has in­stead be­come es­tab­lished through con­ven­tion and re­peat­ed us­age.