A zone to embrace all

A country’s written constitution, as far as I gather, is an attempt to codify the dispersion of legal and legitimate power among the legally created institutions. The constitution also establishes the legal relationships (or nexus, if you prefer a more accurate term) among the respective institutions. Of course, I’m not that naive to assume that a constitution exists in a vacuum and does not take into account or is entirely insulated from cultural, historical, social and other relevant realities from which, ideally, it should spring or, at least, be heavily influenced.

It’s no secret that, initially, our constitution was the product of consultations among the then colonial office officials, the then leaders of government and opposition and respective teams and advisors. The constitution has since been revised and there have been two constitution commissions charged with suggesting changes that would update it, especially taking into account the heterogeneous nature of the society, with its many strands of humanity. Naturally, the very diversity that could be the society’s source of strength can also be exploited by unscrupulous politicians and sundry demagogues for their own self-serving ends with their own hidden and not-so-hidden personal and political agendas. In the current context, destabilisation leading to social chaos and possible anarchy appears to be the name of the game.

As I’ve said before — and I don’t claim originality on that score — a lacuna in our constitution and the phantom nature of our political parties do not preclude the emergence of congenital idiots and/or compulsive liars and incorrigible thieves and conmen at the very echelons of the political structures. To deal with the current concerns of those who claim that what we have is a concentration of political power: The person who occupies the prime ministerial chair at the time exercises an inordinate degree of power and his/her retinue of parliamentarians are, for all practical purposes, mannequins and  empty suits, if not empty heads. On the Opposition benches, it isn’t very different, and possibly worse. That, regrettably, is the nature of our political party situation. That probably led a local journalist to surmise —with some justification, I might add — that he couldn’t-t imagine any of the two current political leaders at the time being head of a government “in any real country,” though for different reasons. The journalist didn’t elaborate, and didn’t have to.

Beyond the mindless twaddle and the inane prattle that one is likely to hear in the parliament and from the political leaders, unless I’m mistaken, there is, I submit, a serious and comprehensible side or (shall we say?) approach to constitution reform. One fellow (to whom any form of constitutional party restraints are seemingly anathema) has suddenly discovered that, “...without constitution reform the people are likely to perish.” Now this fellow — who will remain unnamed — has no qualms about ranting and raving and preaching disaffection. There are the not-so-subtle calls for “civil disobedience and boycotts.” Civil disobedience can be interpreted in a heated and confrontational atmosphere as the prelude to civil strife and he has warned that it only takes a spark to cause a violent explosion. Of course, he’s only warning and not inciting and the so-called “guardian angels” are not yet another ruse to create pandemonium. He no doubt believes that it’s his bounden political duty to do all he can to keep the ethnic pot boiling and hold the country to ransom using — what it appears to me to be any excuse or no excuse at all. But bless his political soul, all that will be done “within the law.”

Of course, our best protection is the maturity and good sense of the citizenry and its apparent ability to discern “the machinations of demented minds.” Now Wade Mark one of this minions —singing for his supper — has, I gather, gone on television screaming about “ethnic cleansing.” Now, if I’ve read the general mood correctly, there is no burning desire for this country to be governed either from Balisier House or Rienzi Complex. From time to time we hear those provocative and asinine outbursts like, “Dis is PNM country” or “Is we time now!” PNM country, my foot! And I’m being biologically incorrect here. “We time now!” to do what? To come back to this patently absurd charge of “ethnic cleansing.” In the US there is that political tradition of political patronage where when a new party comes into power there is a complete changing of the administrative guard. Our country is too small and the incumbent government controls too much of the jobs and resources to subscribe to the “winner take all” policy. Anyone familiar with the facts would know that both parties are guilty of filling public positions with party supporters and hacks and hangers-on. One recalls that every time the then government replaced a PNM supporter with one of their own, the then Opposition leader Patrick Manning would shout, quite ill-advisedly (in my view) “another black man bites the dust.”

It goes without saying that the country is ill-served by a policy of putting square pegs in round holes, simply because the pegs belong to a certain political party. Now there are those who feel that our constitution is “fundamentally flawed” in that it accommodates “a winner take all” syndrome rather than “an all take win” one, to borrow Dennis Pantin’s slogan. The politicians talk about “the sharing of power,” and that becomes an obsession with them and they expect the excitable and gullible to “line up behind one party or the other” without asking ourselves where “we, the people” share in that “power.” You might think that I should have my head examined as some idle dreamer with feet firmly planted in the clouds,but my own view is that what is necessary is, “a generally shared vision of the widest possible comfort zone that embraces the different strands of humanity” deposited in this space by slavery, indenture or whatever.