Performance and Representation in T&T – A Note on January 21 and July 29 Vanus James, MDD August 3, 2013 There are many lesson to be drawn from the elections of January 21, 2013; and now too of July 29, 2013. Tobago and Chaguanas West. These are not only lessons for the incumbents; they also warn the citizen and the wider Caribbean region. The people, in each case, voted to send a strong signal to the current Cabinet and Parliament about what is really wrong with T&T, and to put that signal above their concern with corruption and patronage. These notes seek to distil some of these lessons, even though one could not fully predict the elections beforehand. The first lesson we find is that representation is about the rule of law, not about the delivery of patronage. That is, the authority and influence of the executive should be exercised subject to suitable and enabling legislation and social consensus that is based on legislation; which then constrains the behavior of government officials and the citizen alike. A representative of a constituency must: Communicate the wishes or will of the electorate in the constituency about the laws being made. Communicate own judgement in the exercise of their powers to make laws. Participate in the oversight process, considering the responsibility of the public for oversight. These are the deliverables. Provisions are needed to deal with the difference between the views of the representative and the views of the majority of voters in the constituency, subject to the preeminence of the will of the people and hence the process of oversight. Crucially, Chaguanas West indicates to us that the process of representation is information-intensive, from the people to the representative with feedback. All the main standards, including moral standards, have to be set by the constituency members. To know those standards, a process must exist for the voice of the people to be heard on the substantive issues. Information must be gathered by representatives to inform the overall decision-making process and make it successful; modern information and communication technology may facilitate; may enable community narratives and accumulation and sharing of knowledge. Community groups will play a vital role here. But, where representation and oversight are not possible in this sense, laws will have to be made to enable them. In the context of the rule of law, the legislature cannot hold the executive to account without being independent of it. Both the January and July elections suggest that people are increasingly aware of this. In the role of representative, the parliamentarian does not properly hold powers of patronage – which breeds conflicts of interest, crime and corruption of all sorts. This part of the lesson rests on the reminder that patronage is a major inheritance from the colonial past, alongside parliaments that Lloyd Best used to call governorships. We didn’t only need independence from Britain, we also needed active and conscious destruction of inherited systems of patronage. A society in which the executive and legislative officers have a great deal of personal discretion to dish out patronage does not place a sufficient premium on the rule of law and oversight, and is underperforming with respect to its obligation to allow enough room for the owners of the society to shape the path of executive action. Legislative performance is measured against the satisfaction of these terms of reference. Political parties are supposed to provide the institutional moorings. The performance of the elected representative has to be measured in terms of the outcome of efforts to create opportunities for the broadest range of members of the constituency to make meaningful contributions to decision-making – meaningful in the specific sense of forcing accountability, transparency and consensus. The questions of performance are, did you: Communicate to Parliament the wishes or will of the electorate in the constituency about the laws being made? Communicate to Parliament your own judgement in the exercise of the powers to make laws? Facilitate public participation in the oversight process, considering the responsibility of the public for oversight? Performance, Patronage, and Executive Action The second lesson we want to distil is that in Trinidad and in Tobago, and in the wider Caribbean, our history says that the appropriate job of the executive is to obey and execute the law, while the legislature makes it and the judiciary reads it. People want a say; one enshrined properly in the constitution. For the executive, the primary performance measure is how well it is doing this. The executive should not be in the business of make the law or of dominating the process of making it. One of the dangers of rum and roti politics is that it undermines this confinement of the executive. The parliamentarian as executive does not properly hold formal powers of patronage to the constituency– which breeds conflicts of interest, crime and corruption. If patronage is practiced openly, then there have to be applicable rules of law to control this dangerous mix, and to deal with the related inefficiencies of resource allocation alongside the continuous undermining of the rule of law. In hindsight, what happened in Chaguanas West is partly a maximal exhibition of the power and dangers of patronage, not simply a vote buying exercise. The winner is a superclassico of power figures, who is sufficiently well-schooled and experienced in political maneuvering and wealthy enough to provide a wide variety of substantial security and inducements to a community desirous of personal benefits - legal representation in court, loans of money, influence in business deals, you name it. In hindsight too, the elections of July 29 indicate that the citizens of Chaguanas West appear to be willing constituents, many in substantial need, especially willing to lend a variety of loyalties to the designs of anyone with enough political skills and the money to deliver largesse as payment, regardless of the source of funds. It is this overabundance of willingness on the part of constituents, even in the presence of an abundance of small business, that makes Jamaicans call patronage ‘likki likki’ politics. What is quite surprising is that the citizens of Chaquanas West appear to have a self-view, a class view if you like, different to one born of widespread independent enterprise. Independent enterprise tends to breed a view of high self-worth and a sociology of independence and equal social status. That is to say, there is a surprisingly low capacity in Chaguanas West to deny unequal exchange relation and the image of being unable to reciprocate fully and so be in need of patronage. Why was the winner so able to sell the services of patronage to Chaguanas West on the ground; why are so many families leaning on patronage for their survival and well-being? In any event, the vast differences in wealth, power, or prestige would normally work, especially if confronted by incompetent political opponents, to win favour in return for favors; favour in the form of campaigning on his behalf if he ran for election and other such. The winner was smart enough to embed his cultivated relationship fully in the community norms of Chaguanas West and to ensure strong and flexible face-to-face dealings in the constituency, be Uncle Jack, and create sufficient trust and affection. In the absence of strong intervening local government, suitably responsible to the people from day to day, this was bound to work. As was the case in January 21, what happened in Chaguanas West is also a repudiation of the system of government itself, especially the absence of mechanisms by which the people can control executive action at either the national or local level. The current incumbents did little to develop institutions that allowed the voice of the people to be heard. This, of course, is a historical part of ‘rum and roti’ politics. The UNC, like the PNM, has failed to put in place adequate institutional mechanisms for the individual to pursue security, status, or wealth independently, and to independently control the executive and make it ‘hear’ the public consensus. The UNC failed to build institutions of consensus that could produce an institutionalized mechanism of the rule of law that replaces patronage with indirect exchange, equity of access and law enforcement uniformly enforced to usurp and replace personal reciprocity. The Chaguanas West result has all the markings of these failures to build a democracy giving the people access to strong modem institutions that could to undermine the purely personal alliances with the impersonal guarantees and loyalties of strong institutions through which owners control the executive. Put differently, the performance tests that Jack also failed, but are placed fully at the door of the Cabinet, go directly to this matter of the persistence of rum and roti politics. Since the public has the full role of oversight, did you bring to the public in the constituency: 1. Sufficient information about what the executive is doing, especially as answers to their questions rather than your own propaganda? 2. Significant information about how programs are being administered? a. by whom b. at what cost 3. Significant information about whether officials are obeying the law and complying with legislative intent? 4. Significant information that allows opinion formation based on public review, monitoring, and public supervision of government agencies, programs, activities, and policy implementation? Failure to empower local government is part of the problem of the nation and the UNC, as it was for the PNM. When the Cabinet is appointed, it has responsibility for national matters, not local issues; and it must prosecute national implementation with equity across the local jurisdictions. What unbridled patronage allows is a subversion of the equity across jurisdictions. Strong local government properly responsible to the local people is a mechanism that addresses and undermines this inequity, just as it undermines purely personal alliances with impersonal guarantees and loyalties to strong institutions through which owners control the executive while pursuing personal goals. Like the Tobago vote, the Chaguanas West vote indicts the current Cabinet for failing to do any of these items in their terms of reference and other such things as might provide opportunities for the people to control their leaders and even to remove them without the need for a revolution. So, this is a shot across the bow of the UNC and the nation. It is also a reminder to the current THA. It will take a lot of skill and openness for this particular national executive to do what is needed to see or hear that shot. And, just in case the issues miss this batch of incumbents in Tobago, it is good to say here that it will also take a lot of skill on the part of the current Executive Council of the THA too, more than is currently on display, to avoid upcoming disaster!
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 03:53:33 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015