BIG CHANGES COMINGBy ANDRE BAGOO
Saturday, September 4 2010
click on pic to zoom in« prev photo next photo »THE KAMLA Persad-Bissessar-led Government will move to introduce big changes to the Constitution in line with its 2010 General Election campaign promises, by tabling four bills in Parliament which will radically alter the Supreme Law of the land by imposing limits on the Government.
The four bills, which are currently being drafted by staff at the Office of the Attorney General, are scheduled to be tabled after passage of the 2010/2011 Budget and will kick-start an 18-month period in which government aims to bring forward longer-term changes to the Constitution.
In an interview with Newsday on Thursday at the Coco Reef Resort and Spa in Store Bay, Tobago, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Collin Partap disclosed that government’s ambitious plan to move forward with Constitutional reform, hinges on the strength of the two-thirds majority of the People’s Partnership coalition.
The four bills being drafted, Partap disclosed, will each introduce a single amendment to the Constitution. The bills will seek to:
* limit the number of terms of a Prime Minister to two;
* introduce fixed dates for General Elections;
* create a mechanism for the recall of non-performing MPs and;
* forge a process for referenda for issues of national importance. The legislation will come after a period of consultation, Partap said, and will come alongside the setting-up of a Constitution Commission. The consultation, he disclosed, will aim at selecting the best mechanisms to be used to introduce some of the measures.
“Immediately after the Budget is passed we have a short-term plan involving those bills and a long-term plan,” a relaxed-looking Partap said as he sorted paperwork while seated on a sofa in the lobby of the sea-front hotel at Store Bay.
“Four bills to amend the Constitution will be tabled in Parliament, the commission will be set up,” he said. Of the four bills, he said there will be a short period of consultation on these to iron-out exactly how they will work.
“There are many ways in which things like a right to recall and referenda can happen,” he said. “There are a number of different mechanisms or ways in which we could do each item.”
The Minister, who is charged specifically with Constitutional affairs in the Persad-Bissessar Cabinet, said after the bills are tabled, there will be an eighteen month period in which the planned Constitutional commission will examine a more comprehensive range of reform to the 1976 Constitution.
“The Commission will be a standing body: the aim is to have an eighteen-month consultation period with a view to establishing a draft Constitution,” Partap revealed. Some issues which could come under consideration in this larger reform process are the need for a new process of selection for a Commissioner of Police and the overlapping powers of the office of the prime minister.
Partap gave no indication that the issue of the Privy Council’s appellate jurisdiction could be reviewed, an issue which Persad-Bissessar ruled out at the Post-Cabinet press briefing held on Thursday in Tobago.
Partap was yesterday among Cabinet ministers attending a four-day workshop in Tobago, which is due to end on Sunday. The workshop has been scheduled to see sessions on governance and law moderated by Law Association President Martin Daly SC as well as retired diplomat and former head of the Public Service Reginald Dumas.
During the 2010 General Election campaign, which saw the UNC/COP/TOP coalition take home victory with a Constitutional majority in Parliament, the coalition promised to limit prime ministerial terms, introduce fixed election dates, a right of recall of MPs and referenda. In its first one hundred days in office, however, the party has focused on Local Government Elections, the issue of a new Commissioner of Police and now, the Budget, which is scheduled to be delivered next week Wednesday.
The coalition’s move to push forward constitutional reforms comes near the start of its tenure in Government, when its Constitutional majority may be at the forefront of the parties’ leadership.
The People’s Partnership’s plan to bring big changes to the Constitution also comes after similar attempts by previous administrations. Under the last PNM administration, former Prime Minister Patrick Manning produced a controversial Working Document on Constitutional Reform, a document drafted under his supervision and which came after a series of talks between members of a specially-appointed and secret roundtable of experts who met under the auspices of Manning’s office. Manning and former Opposition leader Basdeo Panday had famously both agreed on the need for Constitutional reform, which could have ushered in a new executive presidency.
It is unclear whether the issue of an executive presidency will be one for consideration of the People’s Partnership Government. The working document produced under Manning was itself a companion to another document, a draft Constitution penned by Sir Ellis Clarke, the country’s first President who alongside TT’s first Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams and other public officials, is largely acknowledged to be one of the key architects of the current Constitution.
The documents, alongside a third draft Constitution (the “Principles of Fairness” draft) produced by a group of lawyers led by Tajmool Hosein TC, QC, have generated tremendous debate over the merits and flaws of the current Constitution.
The current Constitution was last amended in 2006 in a collaboration between the then PNM Government and UNC Opposition. That amendment ushered a new process for the selection of a CoP, a process that has been criticised in political and legal circles.
http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,126964.html-----------------------------------------
I agree with all but the referendum idea... I like Democracy but I eh think ah like it
that much.
