Buddan - POLITICS OF OUR TIME

Bruce Golding has been offering new ways for the Jamaican Parliament to function, such as having the Opposition chair parliamentary committees, hosting a monthly Parliamentary Question Time, improving the stature of the Leader of the Opposition, giving backbenchers more speaking privileges, and constructing a new parliamentary building with new capacity for Parliament.

He has also alluded to the potential for constitutional dictatorship under the Westminster system.

If we are to take these 'reforms' seriously, we need to know two things. The fact that they are being offered piece-meal, in a speech here and a speech there, makes us wonder if they are contrived for the convenience of governing or if they are parts of some larger idea about how to make our democracy function better. In the 1974/75 Throne Speech of Parliament, the PNP government of Michael Manley declared its intention for a comprehensive review of the Independence Constitution, after a decade of experience with it. The PNP has always preferred a comprehensive review to the piece-meal approach of tinkering with parliamentary government

The other thing we need to know is where Mr. Golding's JLP (and its NDM legacy) stands on the Westminster system as against the separation of powers system. Mr. Golding championed the separation of powers model to which Mr. Seaga's JLP had strong objection. But five years ago, Mr. Golding rejoined that JLP and has subsequently relented to criticisms of the model. He has proposed no new model, making it difficult to know what kind of democracy he believes is good for Jamaica. At the moment, it seems to be any kind of democracy that is good for him to govern with.

INTERIM MEASURES

Golding

Mr. Golding said that what is needed is a comprehensive review of the Standing Orders of the House. Hopefully, these will only be interim measures. For instance, Guyana had considered the idea of making the Opposition chair parliamentary committees as part of a full review of its 1980 constitution. In the end, it was decided that the Opposition and the Government would chair two committees, with each rotating between Government and Opposition every two years. In any case, the Government will have a majority on the committees. We will see if the changes are merely symbolic. We will also need to see what difference the other changes really make.

The idea of a new parliamentary building is certainly worth seeing through. But this was already agreed to between the two parties under the previous administration. The Clarke Committee on Parliamentary Salaries had also recommended it. We will see if the Government can commit itself to the funds. Ironically, the Government has cut the plan for a conference centre in Montego Bay. Can it justify spending any similar amount to building a 'conference centre' for parliamentarians in Kingston? Will the private sector allow swapping a business centre for a political centre?

I do support a new parliamentary building. As an interim measure, we should furnish an office for the Leader of the Opposition. This seems to make more functional sense and makes upgrading the rank of the Leader of the Opposition an idea with real substance. Another interim measure should be to make the Hansard proceedings of Parliament available online. Trinidad and Tobago's Parliament does this. An e-parliament serves transparency.

DEMOCRATISING THE CONSTITUTION

Reorganising House business and modernising Parliament's facilities help but are not substitutes for making the constitution and the larger political system more democratic. The focus on the politics of Parliament should not obscure the larger constitutional issues that have been sitting on the shelf for over 12 years, since the constitutional committee submitted its report.

Jamaica runs the risk of once having the most advanced constitution in the British West Indies in 1944 to now having the least advanced one among the big four. Guyana has already improved upon its 1980 constitution and the country claims to have the most inclusive constitution in the English-speaking Caribbean. Trinidad and Tobago has already improved upon its Independence constitution and the ruling party says it wants to introduce an executive presidency if it wins the elections in November. Barbados is moving to a new Republican Constitution.

Jamaica has wasted valuable time since 1974/75. The JLP has shown little enthusiasm for fundamental changes to the Westminster system. Mr. Golding is now tinkering with Parliament without providing a schedule for moving ahead with a referendum on the constitutional changes that have been agreed to. The move to a new constitution has always depended on support from the JLP. Now that it has power, it can demonstrate its will.

Parliamentary tinkering migh the relations between the two sides of Parliament but it changes nothing of the relations between Parliament, people, government and the people's sovereign power. Thanks to the Patterson administrations the members of the new Parliament could take their parliamentary oaths to Jamaica and the constitution and not to a foreign monarch. Ironically, the JLP had then criticised the change as a piece-meal approach to constitutional reform. The reason the country needs comprehensive reform is that the same leader of Parliament, who takes an Oath of Allegiance to Jamaica, still has to recommend a knighthood for the country's Governor-General to a foreign monarch.

There are other examples of this absurdity. Political activists of the ruling party have to wait for more than a year for the foreign Privy Council to give a ruling on the Portmore toll, and if it rules in their favour hundreds of millions of dollars would have been paid by, users when they might have had speedier response from the Caribbean Court of Justice. The foreign monarch, who refuses to apologise for the slave trade, even in the year when we commemorate the abolition of that trade, has the right to refuse 'her subjects', over which she is sovereign, entry to her own country. The Jamaican government can grant national honours, as it once again did last week, but it cannot grant a knighthood to any Jamaican, an honour reserved for the foreign monarch.

who has the final say

Mr. Golding can say we should hang murderers but the success of that decision rests on the right of appeal to a foreign body, not with the Prime Minister's government. Members of Parliament might be found to have dual citizenship swearing allegiance to a foreign power, but on appeal it is not the constitution that has the final say but the Privy Council of a foreign country.

None of these absurdities will change with parliamentary tinkering. The JLP says it favours republican status for Jamaica. The present contradictions can only be removed by changing the constitution. Jamaicans still await their Bill of Rights, powers to impeach state officials, and to make their own constitution so as to have a sovereign democratic contract between the people and their state. That contract demands more than making Parliament convenient for government.

Chuck

Delroy Chuck is the new Speaker of the House. In 2002 when the Oath of Allegiance was changed, he said that such a change should have been part of a larger and coherent constitutional package that removed the Queen as head of State. Let us hope he uses his chair to make this happen.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. E-mail: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm