WHY WE NEED CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM - PART TWO

 As I've said in my previous post, what we have in Trinidad & Tobago is a 'party-led' as opposed to a 'people-led', democracy. By that I mean that people generally vote for a particular political party and not for the individual candidates who are making up the political party's list of wannabe parliamentarians. On top of that,  people tend to vote for the particular party of their choice because they like a particular leader, or don't like, who the 'other' party has as a leader.  And they understand that a vote for "X" is really a vote for leader "Y".

If you look at this problem dispassionately you will quickly come to the conclusion that our political system doesn't really reflect the principle of 'one man/woman - one vote', but really a system whereby control of the country is being handed over to a relatively small number of people on BOTH sides.

So? How can we fix this? My proposal is that we scrap the present system which allows the leader of the winning side to call an election at any time within  any given five year period  and have a fixed day for elections. Next, I would abolish all local government as well as the Tobago House of Assembly. For crying out loud, the mayor of Miami presides over a larger land area and  more people than the whole of T&T! Then I would divide the present 41 seats in the Lower House in two and make it so that we have 82 representatives who would be full time workers as opposed to the part time workers that we have now. These 82 representatives would take over the duties and responsibilities of the local governments in their areas or districts in addition to their Parliamentary duties. As such, they would obviously have to have a staff in order to support them. Some of the staff could be political appointments,

The present system which has created the Tobago House of Assembly effectively makes Tobago a self-governing colony of Trinidad. Under my proposal, Tobago would have a block of four representatives, or a vote in the Lower House of just about five percent. Because (amongst other things) the Lower House would have to approve budgets in order for the representatives to have money for their areas, the Tobago reps would effectively have more say over what money Tobago gets than it does now.

Finally, these representatives would face the polls on a fixed day (eg., the first Monday in September) every two years.  This short time would mean that if the representative did not perform  but was a favourite  of his/her political leader then  a die-hard supporter of that particular party could effectively force the removal of the rep by voting against him/her. After all, it would only be for two years and this would effectively cause to be loosened the particular party's grip on power and force it to perform or get out.

But two years is a very short time for any meaningful policies to take effect. So, I would have an elected Senate made up of, say, 41 Senators from the existing 41 constituencies serving for six years with one third facing the polls every two years. So, if somebody from the majority party decides that we need a law, say, that all men should wear green pants, and that party's candidates go down to (an unsurprising) defeat on this issue in the Lower house, those Senators facing re-election in a short two years hence are going to drop this 'green pants' law or face certain defeat.

Then I would have a President elected once every four years but who can't be removed if his party loses a vote in either the Senate or the Lower House.

Obviously this proposal is not original and would need a lot of 'tweaking'. It is not a perfect solution. Maybe, there isn't such a thing as a 'perfect solution'. But it is put to you as a way to solve the problem and to try and create more of a 'people-led' Democracy. What are your proposals?