Senator: TT Constitution
breaches international law

Our 1976 Republican Constitution, in section 1 (2), actually breaches international law and Trinidad and Tobago could well find itself embarrassed in the international arena.

So said Independent Senator Parvatee Anmolsingh-Mahabir on Tuesday evening in the Senate while speaking on Independent Senator while Prof Ken Ramchand’s  private members’ motion which urges constitutional reform.

Reading out the offending section, she remarked: “The territory of Trinidad is being incorrectly defined as inclusive of the seabed and the subsoil of the Continental Shelf outside of the territorial sea.

“This claim is contrary to international law. The Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf in 1958 and the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982, confer on the State only sovereign rights over the Continental Shelf as distinct from sovereignty. The correct jurisdiction we exercise under the regime of the Continental Shelf is the exclusive right to explore and exploit the mineral wealth and sedentary resources thereon but not ownership of the seabed and subsoil as the Constitution claims”.

She added: “This must be seen in the context of the increasing extensions of coastal state jurisdictions that are so fundamentally important for an offshore oil and gas producing island state such as Trinidad and Tobago”. 

Assuring that our country would continue to enjoy its exclusive rights to our oil and natural gas reserves in the marine area, she said: “What I am taking issue with is the error that is inherent in this section of the Constitution. We need to review the definition of our territorial boundaries especially in light of a new corpus of laws that have been agreed to by the international community, principles of which must be reflected in our Constitution in setting the limits of our maritime jurisdictions as well as he airspace above the land territory”.  The senator also criticised the Cabinet’s law-making capacity under the Constitution.

She said: “Cabinet can circumvent the exclusive law-creating capacity of Parliament by negotiating bilateral and international agreements and simply introduce enabling legislation in Parliament when necessary... Segments of territory of Trinidad and Tobago claimed and annexed in the 1942 Treaty of Paria with Venezuela were ceded in the process without parliamentary approval...Therefore I suggest that prior parliamentary approval must be accorded to all agreements before Trinidad and Tobago can become a contracting party”.

Multiculturalism, she urged, should be enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution, like enlightened countries like Canada, Sweden and Australia. She said: “This Constitution needs to be revisited and reviewed to reflect the new prevailing socio-economic and political reality”.

Urging the establishment of a Constitution Commission, she added that what was also needed was a reform of the attitudes of some of our politicians to put nation before self.