POLITICS-TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO: Snap Election Plan Under a Cloud

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Analysis - Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Aug 24, Aug 24 2001 (IPS) - If politics is the art of the possible, as the saying goes, then Prime Minister Basdeo Panday’s canvas appears to be shrinking.

Squeezed on one side by squabbles within his party and on the other side by renewed attacks from an opposition that has challenged the legitimacy of his administration virtually since its first day, Panday has floated the possibility of a snap election.

The question he now confronts is whether he even has the political standing to call one. Ironically, the very political tussles that provide motive for early elections also are Panday’s greatest constraints going forward.

The prime minister signaled his intention to call early elections Aug. 13, urging party loyalists to “get out your jerseys” in preparation for a campaign, adding for clarity that he was not asking them to mobilise only for next year’s local elections.

In the December 2000 general election, Panday’s United National Congress (UNC) won 19 of 36 parliamentary seats, leaving 16 to the main opposition Peoples National Movement (PNM). The National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), a coalition partner of the UNC between 1995 and 2000, took the remaining seat.

Under the Constitution, the next general election need not be held until 2005.

Under the Westminster parliamentary model practised here and in much of the Caribbean, the prime minister has the prerogative to call an election at any time during the government’s five-year term in office.

Perhaps the region’s most famous snap election was in 1992, when then St Lucia Prime Minister Sir John Compton called fresh polls less than two weeks after winning a one-seat majority. The results of the new vote were no different.

Here, the PNM has gone to court seeking to overturn the victory of two UNC parliamentarians on the grounds that they submitted false nomination documents and therefore should not have qualified to run in the first place.

Panday has said he would face the electorate should the courts rule in favour of the PNM and effectively reduce his administration to a minority government.

Section 68 of the country’s Constitution says, “The President, acting in accordance with the advice of the Prime Minister, may at any time prorogue or dissolve Parliament”, clearing the way for new elections.

The PNM contends that, given the opposition’s legal challenge to parliament’s existing composition, the president is not duty bound to accept Panday’s advice.

“We feel that any attempt to call an election is an attempt to frustrate that. Any attempt to call an election is to circumvent the rule of law,” said PNM leader Patrick Manning.

If his party wins in court, Manning added, then the two seats being challenged would provide the opposition party with a majority in parliament and give the president the opportunity of calling “upon someone else to form a new government” – meaning himself.

Former acting High Court Judge and opposition Senator Glenda Morean backed Manning’s position, saying that while the Constitution provides for the president to dissolve parliament on the advice of the prime minister, it does not automatically follow that he must do so.

Morean said the word “may” in Section 68 suggests that the president has some “residue of discretion.”

Arnold Ramlogan, an attorney representing the ruling party in the court battles, countered that the president lacks discretionary powers to refuse to act on the advice of the prime minister.

In a statement, Ramlogan went further to argue that not even the courts could decide on parliament’s composition. “The role and power of the court, as stipulated by parliament, is to hear the election petition and give a written certification of its determination to the Speaker of the House of Representatives,” he said.

Former Attorney General Anthony Smart insisted the Constitution is unequivocal in affirming the prime minister’s right to call an early election.

“If the (court) decision goes in favour of the PNM, even if they are given the two seats, we will have to prepare ourselves either for a by-election or a general election,” said Smart, who served as attorney general from 1986 to 1991.

“If the UNC loses those two seats, the next step is a vote of no confidence in the prime minister in the House of Representatives, which they (the UNC) will lose because they will not have a majority,” Smart said, adding that the matter would then have to be resolved under Section 77 of the Constitution.

Under that section, the prime minister would then have seven days to resign or advise the president to dissolve parliament, paving the way for fresh elections.

“Only if Prime Minister Panday failed to take one of those two options could President (A.N.R.) Robinson appoint Manning prime minister,” Smart said. He added that he believed Panday “would call on the president to dissolve parliament and call a general election.”

Panday and Robinson feuded early this year over the president’s refusal to swear in seven defeated UNC candidates as Senators. Robinson warned at the time of a “creeping dictatorship” but eventually relented under a barrage of legal opinions from prominent Constitutional lawyers solicited by the UNC.

While Panday awaits the outcome of the opposition’s legal challenges, he should watch out for defections from his own party, said political analyst and media commentator Kirk Meighoo.

“This is what the government must defend itself against and this is what the opposition must aim for,” Meighoo said.

The UNC leadership appears to be in disarray. Panday has butted heads with a number of Cabinet members over national policy and internal party politics. He has stripped Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj of his responsibility over a drug-trafficking and money-laundering task force and an anti-corruption squad.

Panday also has gutted the portfolio of Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ralph Maraj, removing from his purview the information ministry and national television and radio stations.

Maraj has threatended to resign from the Cabinet. Maharaj has dug in his heels while at the same time attempting to play down his differences with Panday. He also has said an unnamed financial firm, presumably a target of his anti-graft activities, is conspiring to have him killed.

So chronic is the infighting that Finance Minister Gerald Yetming has abandoned efforts to bring about peace within the party after himself becoming the object of internal criticism.

Meanwhile, the Elections and Boundaries Commission, which is embroiled in the opposition’s legal challenge to the last election, has said it is prepared for a snap election.