“You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament” (Edmund Burke – 1777 – Letter To The Sheriffs Of Bristol).
Either directly or by judicial interpretations, national constitutions must change to reflect current developmental requirements. Outside of the very self-interested leadership of the PPP/C, the realization that our constitution is in need of substantial change is almost universal.
The acid test of any proposed constitutional change in Guyana must be whether it is likely to help create the conditions that will enhance national unity, cooperative living, democracy and development.
The recent proposed changes to the constitution of Trinidad and Tobago have generated some interest in Guyana. However, my concern today is with the provision to allow constituencies to recall Members of Parliament (MP) if they believe them to be ineffective. A recent Mori poll in Trinidad and Tobago showed public support for the proposed constitutional reform, but the highest level, some 70%, was in support of the recall proposal.
Notwithstanding the usual boast by the PPP/C of how wonderful our constitution is, our MPs’ accountability to their constituencies must be the weakest in the Caribbean and I venture that a high level of support for a constituency recall can also be found in Guyana. But does such a change meet the acid test: would our multiethnic society be best served by our MPs being placed in the political context of recall?
The belief that the represented should be able to recall the representatives they send to various bodies, including even the judiciary in some instances, has a very long tradition going back to the Greeks themselves. Indeed, the quest for representative compliance was, on occasions, very radical; consisting of efforts to instruct representatives precisely how to vote on particular issues.
Quite apart from encouraging representatives to adequately service their constituents, it was argued in favour of the power of recall that it allows voters to be able to influence the behaviour of their representatives much more often than at periodic elections. Claims were also made that it reduced corruption by helping to short-circuit the influence of private interests and moderate oligarchic control by decreasing the influence of the central political party machinery.
But the opening quotation raises the question about the level of freedom a representative should have to oppose the wishes of her constituency and the impact of a recall upon this freedom. It is in this context that we need to consider the trusteeship as opposed to the delegate model, of representation.
Ideally, in the delegate model the representative must act strictly upon the mandate given to him by his constituency. But in the trusteeship model the representative may act in the greater national interest even if doing so runs counter to the short term interest of the constituency. As Burke famously conceptualized the position of the representative in the trusteeship model:
“his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. … Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion”.
With the possible exception of the oligarchies of the PPP and PNCR, I believe that the question of our having more constituencies and of MPs being more responsive to those who actually voted for them resonates across the racial barriers.
Our constitution allows for half of our MPs to be directly elected by constituencies and we can possibly change it to have more. Today, less than half – twenty-five – are constituency MPs who have largely been chosen by the central party apparatus. By way of the Constitutional (Amendment) Bill 2007, all MPs can be recalled if they lose favour with their party. Usually, these representatives are not accountable to their constituents who rarely can identify them or know where they can be regularly located.
I have argued more comprehensively elsewhere that this must be changed. We need to increase the number of constituencies to at least the constitutional limit; if possible adopt arrangements that will encourage cross-ethnic constituency voting and change from the closed list to an open list system of representation. (“We need reforms to sustain the present consensus regime:” SN:22/02/2012. “Our electoral system should require that we consider ‘them’”: SN: 29/02/2012).
However, more important to the tenor of the present discourse, our constituencies are more likely to be multi-ethnic, but with one dominant group who, unless the recall requires some kind of super majority, is likely to be in a position to threaten recall against an MP that goes against the dominant interest. Yet a bi-communal/multiethnic society needs more than ever people who are willing to run against the grain of what their ethnic constituencies want. That is, people prepared, when necessary, to be fair and put minority and the national interests above ethnic constituency interests.
Trinidad and Tobago also have difficulties with ethnic alliances and perhaps this is one of the reasons its recall proposal is designed the way it is. The threshold to initiate the recall is only 10% of registered voters but the recall itself can only be achieved by a supermajority of two-thirds of all the registered voters in a constituency.
We should note that the tradeoff, which I believe a country such as ours should be willing to pay, is that while this arrangement might help to protect minority interests, it also makes a recall near impossible. (Richard Albert – 2014 -“An Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment in Trinidad & Tobago?” Boston College Law School, www.iconectblog.com).
As with most aspects of political management in our type of societies, what appears simple and normal rarely fits the bill, and to properly design constitutional changes (recall in this instance) that are efficacious is usually a challenge.
What appears certain is that to meet our acid test we need to institutionalize political space wherein representatives more in tune with Burke’s vision can flourish. Indeed, he also recognised that “In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.”
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
