Privileges Committee acts as court of law

It is unfortunate that the political leader of the United National Congress (UNC), Basdeo Panday, should have expected UNC Member for Pointe a Pierre, Gillian Lucky, to have acted on the basis of Party allegiance and not sign the Report of the Privileges Committee on Allegations of Breach of Privileges. (The Privileges Committee had inquired into a reported incident on September 15, last year in the Members Lounge, in which an MP was allegedly assaulted, physically, by another MP).

It is regrettable that Panday should have stated at a Party caucus, as Ms Lucky has quoted, that politics had a morality of its own and that if Lucky’s professional integrity was more important than politics, then she should leave politics. Further, that she should be a team player. It was Newsday which pointed out in its April 9 Editorial that because "the Privileges Committee acts as a court when it meets, she chose to make her decision on the basis of facts rather than Party allegiance."

A point that Lucky made at a press conference on Monday held by UNC MP for San Juan/Barataria, Dr Fuad Khan and herself, was that her decision had been based solely on the evidence that had been elicited before the committee.

It is a standing Westminster system Parliamentary rule that MPs, whether government or opposition, taking part in a debate in either the Upper or Lower House, or as members of a committee, are under the directions of the Party Whip and as such are required to vote on the issues purely on the basis of Party allegiance.

The sole exception, and this is understandable, is that of the Privileges Committee. In Trinidad and Tobago the House of Representatives or the Senate acts as a Court of Law in any instance where action is being taken against a Member of the House or someone from outside of the House, and on the basis of the evidence adduced may have to be punished. The House formally delegates to the Privileges Committee the authority to act on its behalf as a Court of Law, and each member of this committee acts in a judicial role, or as Lucky has put it, in a quasi-judicial role.

The practice, flowing from the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, was inherited by Trinidad and Tobago from the United Kingdom, where the Upper House, the House of Lords, delegating this authority to the Judicial Committee, is the United Kingdom’s and this country’s final court of appeal. There is a move, well underway, to replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice as the English speaking Region’s final Court of Appeal. But I have strayed.

So that when Panday speaks as though Lucky should have acted in accordance with the dictates of the UNC, — of which incidentally she had not been aware, and clearly would have dismissed had she been— seemingly because as he has stated, politics has a morality of its own, he is, at best, pathetically absurd. What the country should appreciate is that had Lucky’s Party attempted to influence or dictate outright to her what her action should have been with respect to the Report of the Privileges Committee this would have amounted to interference with her judicial or quasi-judicial role.

It was Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, who had stated that "Man is by nature a political animal", while at home, one of the nation’s first batch of Government Ministers, Albert Gomes, had declared: "In politics, anything goes." While Aristotle’s argument is a truth, implicit in Gomes’ posture is that it was alright to manipulate individuals, systems and the truth.

Nonetheless, both Aristotle and Albert Gomes, almost certainly, would have been shocked at what was implied in the Opposition Leader’s statement and would have rejected it. This columnist salutes Lucky.

I switch gears. Barbados prime minister, Owen Arthur, appears to be making overtures to Tobago and has hinted that Tobago would be better off in a union with Barbados than with Trinidad. What Arthur has apparently forgotten is that an 1876 attempt at Confederation, involving Tobago, Barbados, St Vincent, Grenada and St Lucia had been rejected by Barbados after having been roundly condemned by the planter class.

Indeed, the governor of Barbados in a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on March 11, 1876 had pointed out that "some of the planters who opposed Confederation told the people that it meant a return to slavery..." To his credit the Governor had been in favour of Barbados linking up with Tobago and the other islands which I have named.

Two months later, in May of 1876, Sir Conrad Reeves, the son of a slave, but who was as British as the best or worst of them, in addressing the Barbados House of Assembly of which he was an ex-officio Member, stated: "We have declined Confederation, because in the form which it takes in the case of the West Indian colonies it means, and can only mean, the surrender by us, in the long run, or our representative form of government which we have enjoyed for 250 years."

So that not only the planter class in Barbados had been opposed to any form of closer political union with Tobago and other Caribbean islands, but the distinguished son of a slave as well. Meanwhile, when Barbados moved in December, 1965 for the establishment of a Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA) in the region, it had pointedly ignored Tobago and Trinidad. It was only the intervention of then Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, the late Dr Eric Williams, and the diplomacy of his Minister of West Indian Affairs, Mr. Kamaluddin Mohammed, that allowed for the inclusion of this country in CARIFTA, when it was formed, and the expansion of the concept of a Free Trade Area.

I have nothing against Arthur’s "trying a thing" as we are wont to say in Trinidad and Tobago. I wished merely to set the record straight for the young students of Caribbean history born and/or living in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and other member states of the Caribbean Community of Nations.

My love for Barbados remains unshaken.