Dear Editor,
This government has now established a steering committee to eventually create another committee to reform the constitution. Why do we need a politically partisan committee to establish the scope of work and modality for an eventual constitutional reform commission to operate within and why does it need six months to do so?
To make matters worse, it is bound to report to cabinet, which is in effect the presidency, especially given the recent dismantling of the Cummingsburg Accord.
The presidency through the cabinet gets to decide whether it wants to accept the findings of this steering committee. If the steering committee heard from the people about certain changes they want, the President and cabinet could refuse to heed those calls and present its own frame of reference for the eventual constitutional reform commission.
Any later attempt to involve civil society and the political opposition after this debacle will naturally and expectedly draw their rejection I fear this manoeuvre is nothing but an attempt to frame the scope of upcoming constitutional reform and in doing so to make such change only beneficial to the government while discarding the critical matters that must be publicly debated such as whether we need the presidency at all. It is not even clear if the Steering Committee’s findings will be made public.
The problem with these disturbing plays is that they expose this country to a strengthening of an unreformed PPP potentially returning to power.
They force the people to choose between two pariahs. That sort of choice is always prone to unexpected voting behaviour and outcomes. As I have stated ad nauseam, the PPP has a bigger core captive constituency than the coalition. The coalition has a bigger core of swing voters, primarily Mixed voters with some Indian and Amerindian voters, than the PPP. Therefore, the coalition has a smaller room for error. Even a moderate withdrawal of swing voters will see the coalition lose an election.
Playing despotic games when straightforward democratic action will suffice will trigger such withdrawal. Losing an election without significant change to the constitutional power structure of this country will result in tragic repercussions for this coalition. Furthermore, any evidence of undemocratic shadow boxing around something as important as constitutional reform when Venezuela is breathing down our necks weakens our ability to secure support from the world and critically, from the West, especially if legislative elections in 2015 hand the pro-West Venezuelan opposition control of that nation’s legislature.
The government should stop playing games and appoint the real independent constitutional reform commission and let the people of the country decide what they want for constitutional change. Hire a reputable, skilled and independent foreign polling company to poll the nation to know its desires.
Even better, they should use their simple majority to trigger a referendum and let the people vote on changing the constitution. Achieving constitutional change is not rocket science nor does it need this kind of subterfuge. My interest in this farce is to see what some of these committee members will recommend after we have significant public evidence including writings, speeches and video from them offering their views on reforming the constitution when they were out of power.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
