A lesson for ‘CYAAPIT’ ANN
CYAAPIT ANN has joined her husband in the House of Representatives as the duly elected member of Parliament for Portland East. With Daryl in the West, the Vazes control an entire parish. Cyaapit Ann will quickly learn that unless the prime minister keeps his East Portland by-election campaign promise to keep his promises to the people of the constituency as head of the Executive of Government, there will be little she can do to keep her promises. Our bastardised Westminster system does not allow this. But at least there is a firm budgetary commitment this financial year to start laying down the cyaapit of the South Coast Highway from Harbour View to Port Antonio.
The Budget is the parliamentarian’s biggest opportunity at influencing the policies, plans, and programmes of the Government in the interest of the people she represents. But we see how the Standing Finance
Committee, which is the whole House of Representatives, functions at Budget time.
Mrs Vaz has joined Her Majesty’s Government, broadly speaking.
Discussing the Westminster parliamentary system of Government with university students who will shortly become public servants in urban planning has led me back to looking at just how deeply embedded in Her Majesty the system is. It is really a monarchical parliamentary democracy. Some believe that removing the absentee monarch from constitutional arrangements will inevitably improve governance. The excision of the monarch may well advance abstract ‘sovereignty’ and puff national pride.
Our current constitutional arrangement says, “There shall be a Parliament of Jamaica which shall consist of Her Majesty, a Senate and a House of Representatives.” And addressing “Executive Powers”, the Constitution baldly states: “The executive authority of Jamaica is vested in Her Majesty.”
NEW HOME FOR PARLIAMENT
The Parliament can meet anywhere. The Constitution simply prescribes that “each session of Parliament shall be held at
such place within Jamaica and shall commence at such time as the Governor-General may by Proclamation published in the Gazette appoint.” Since 1962, the Parliament has been meeting in a captured KSAC (KSAMC) building on Duke Street, with its surroundings progressively deteriorating.
I am among the staunch advocates of a grand, beautiful, and awe-inspiring home for the national Parliament. The present Administration has found the courage to take on the project for constructing a new Parliament building. The voices of objection about costs from stretched public finances and better priorities have faded away. The location fight continues.
I have no objection to the use of National Heroes Park and surrounding areas as the Government has a right to. The green-space problem raised again by this newspaper in its last Tuesday’s Editorial, ‘Genius Design, but better on King’s House land’, is better resolved by creating smaller parks in the townships across the city, one within easy walking distance of every city dweller. And the Parliament is great for the standing and rehabilitation of the downtown heart of the city.
The description by winners of the design competition of the meaning and significance of their design, ‘Out of Many, One People’, warms my heart and captures my consent:
“People,” the winning architects said, “have asked what prompted our design, and I keep saying it is our motto, ‘Out of Many, One People’. We wanted to design a great, iconic building ... . When you think of countries around the world, it’s their buildings which obviously come to mind, and these reflect that country. We see that in the White House in Washington. It makes a statement to the world, one of power and influence. This is the kind of powerful statement that Jamaica’s new Parliament building must exude.
“The building’s façade articulation”, the ‘Out of Many, One People’,” lead architect explains, “references the country’s colonial and classic design vernacular. We cannot deny that we are an ex-colony, and most of the buildings that are recognisable in Jamaica, we get them from our colonial past ….Some of our domestic architecture reflects that Georgian influence, so I didn’t want to deny that because that’s part of who we are. But...I didn’t want it to be the overbearing statement.”
But back to Her Majesty’s Government, which will occupy the new Parliament building. The absentee Queen’s proxy is the governor general. “... The executive authority of Jamaica [is] exercised on behalf of Her Majesty by the Governor General either directly or through officers subordinate to him.”
Digest that “directly” part. The governor-general has more constitutional power than even holders of the office seem to realise and has a critical role to play as a kind of embodiment of the State.
In practice, the governor general exercises his ascribed executive authority through the Cabinet, headed by a prime minister: “There shall be in and for Jamaica a Cabinet which shall consist of the prime minister and such number of other ministers (not being less than eleven) … Not less than two nor more than four of the ministers … shall be persons who are members of the Senate.”
Which is why the Government faced a constitutional dilemma with the exit of Senator Ruel Reid from the Cabinet – one of two senators then in the Government.
“The Cabinet shall be the principal instrument of policy and shall be charged with the general direction and control of the Government of Jamaica … .” But listen to this, “and shall be collectively responsible therefore to Parliament”.
The weak parliamentary oversight of the Executive that we see has less to do with some failure of Constitution and more to do with the over-riding dominance of political parties and the blind loyalty of soft parliamentarians to them.
The governor-general appoints as prime minister “in his discretion, the member of the House of Representatives who, in his judgment, is best able to command the confidence of a majority of the members of that House.”
VERY UNLIKELY IN OUR SYSTEM
The Constitution accommodates parliamentary rebellion against a Prime Minister. The governor general is obliged to revoke the appointment of a prime minister if such a resolution receives a majority vote, unless the prime minister counters instead by requesting the dissolving of Parliament.
With the strength of party dominance and party loyalty, parliamentary rebellion against a prime minister is very unlikely in our system.
Interestingly, the office of ‘Leader of the Opposition’ is placed under Chapter VI, ‘Executive Powers’, of the Constitution. The leader of the opposition is intended to be part of Government, broadly conceived, and must be consulted on many critical appointments on the Public Administration side of Government. This is one area in which the Constitution could be strengthened to require parliamentary approval for a whole range of senior Civil Service appointments.
In addition to the Judicature, the Public Service is really an arm of the Government of Jamaica, the arm through which the Executive executes policies, plans, and programmes. The Whitehall component of the Westminster-Whitehall system. The Constitution, as is, devotes a lot of space in Chapter IX, “The Public Service” to appointments and removals of public officers but none to the overarching principles of public administration under Westminster-Whitehall.
The Public Service is intended to be neutral, the servant of the Executive when properly directed in law. It advises and executes as directed but has no authority to make laws or to create policy. The political contamination of the Public Service is a huge weakness in our version of the Westminster White hall model. And technocrats have more policy power than MPs.
Legislators feeling stymied by an ineffective and unresponsive Public Service, which they themselves devised, have resorted to creating a bypass Constituency Development Fund that gives them discretionary spending power over State resources, which Westminster-Whitehall did not intend.
The new member of parliament for Portland Eastern will soon find herself fettered and bogged down in a system that allows little influence over state policy on behalf of constituents or for the effective functioning of the bureaucracy of the State for delivering services to all citizens everywhere as a matter of routine.
Her husband is dubbed the “go to man” in Government, the magic man of special interventions and personal fixes. Portland may be in for better times with Mr Go To and Action Ann in control of the parish. But that’s not Westminster-Whitehall. And it’s hardly the fault of the Constitution.