Mitchell: Be careful with Constitution

Addressing a UNC National Assembly on Saturday at Rienzi Complex, Couva, Mitchell spelt out the pitfalls of this document and different types of national constitutions.

“Be careful going into a new Constitution,” he warned.

He echoed the earlier concerns of Leader of the Opposition Kamla Persad-Bissessar that the draft proposes that an Executive President, who is both head of State and head of government, will be elected by Parliament and not by the population.

Mitchell said, “It is time for the people of the Caribbean to say who will be the Executive President.” He said he was offering suggestions and not telling Trinidad and Tobago how to run its affairs.

Mitchell suggested that an Executive President must obtain at least 50 percent of popular votes plus one-vote, scoffing that it would be improper for him to be elected by say just 22 percent of voters.

He also suggested that a new Constitution allow Members of Parliament to be elected by a mix of both the traditional first-past-the-post system and proportional representation (PR).

In the former, only the winner in each constituency takes office, whereas in the latter the parliamentary seats are shared out between all parties according to the proportion of the popular votes each party received. “I don’t like winner-take-all,” Mitchell said.

He proposed that half the parliament seats be awarded by each method of voting. Mitchell said the advantage of the first-past-the-post system is that it allows local people to vote for a particularly good individual candidate, while the beauty of the PR system is that it countered the effects of any gerrymandering of constituency boundaries.

He suggested that Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean should marry the electoral systems of the UK, USA and South America.

Mitchell also expressed his disagreement with the draft Constitution’s proposal that Trinidad and Tobago replace the Privy Council as the highest court by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

Referring to the recent clash between the Government and Chief Justice Sat Sharma which has now been sent to the Privy Council, Mitchell said, “What happened with the Chief Justice is a nail in the coffin of the Caribbean Court of Justice.”

He said that as a “Caribbean national” it grieved him to say that the CCJ cannot yet work. “We need further development of our checks and balances.”

Illustrating the low esteem in which the CCJ is held in the region, Mitchell said the governments of Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, and of Guyana and Suriname respectively, had not taken their boundary disputes to the CCJ to resolve, but had gone abroad.