Mr. Norman Horne has finally done the right thing. We are glad. For as long as Mr. Horne clung to his Senate seat, he not only demeaned himself, but contributed to the encrusting of corrosive values and the diminution of decency and honour.
It is to be recalled that Mr. Horne was appointed to the Senate by the former leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Mr. Seaga, but resigned from the JLP just as Mr. Seaga was being pushed out of the party's leadership and Mr. Bruce Golding was taking over the reins. Yet Mr. Horne stayed in the Senate seat for more than a year, using the constitutional loophole, the document's silence on the removal of a Senator other than by his or her resignation.
Having rejoined the governing People's National Party, Mr. Horne, was finally shamed into a resignation, not least by the arguments of this column and the embarrassment caused the 'new' administration and Government. He had previously justified what some would say was his squatting in the Senate by the argument that the founding fathers expected senators to be independent and "to vote on the merits of the law and their own conscience, not on any party political line".
Of course, Mr. Horne knows that he drew a red herring. A rotten one at that. Its stench is palpable.
The fact is that if the founding fathers were intent on having 'independents' appointed to the Senate, they would have fashioned a mechanism for appointments other than the one that currently exists. The Governor-General has no discretion in whom he appoints once the recommendations have been made by the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition. Moreover, the proportion that either is allowed to appoint is finely calibrated to maintain a balance of power in the legislature, so that the majority side, the Government, cannot easily pass laws or make constitutional changes that require special majorities, without negotiation and consensus.
As Mr. Horne points out, the Jamaican constitution does not mention political parties. But the founding fathers were practical men of political parties, well versed in politics and the use of manipulation of power. Indeed, while they might have appointed to the Senate people apparently more cerebral, dignified and more distant from the hurly-burly of the hustings, party people the appointees largely remained. Of course, there have been instances when people of genuine independence have been appointed, but these have been the exceptions rather than the rule.
The Norman Horne incident points to the need for an adjustment to the constitution to give the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition the capacity, having appointed senators, to remove them. There is also, perhaps, the need for the appointment of genuinely independent senators, a mechanism for which cannot be beyond us.
In the meantime, we are intrigued by Mr. Horne's logic on the nature of Senate and would like to hear his view on why he was appointed to the chamber in the first place, what mandate he felt he had in debates and how he believed he fulfilled that mandate when he was a member of good standing in the JLP. Was his appointment, for instance, because of his independence and did he take a stridently independent position?
We think not!
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