Pleasant Good Day to All,
Having read the Report of the National Advisory Committee on Constitutional Reform, entitled “We the People”, it is understandable why Constitutional Reform has been so hard to attain, even if it didn’t require a special majority of both Houses of Parliament to be enacted. As well-meaning as the persons who served on this Committee might have been, everything from their methodology and ideology to their general approach to the task has been so botched that it is genuinely hard to take any of their recommendations seriously. Chapter V of the Report, which is the working document submitted as a potential replacement for our current Constitution, begins with a line so outrageously banal that I found it difficult to take anything else in the document seriously.
Because while the sentiment of “ACKNOWLEDGING the history, suffering, exploitation, and discrimination inflicted under colonialism on our people, the strength of our First Peoples, and our enduring resilience, creativity, enterprise, and indomitable will” might have been something that could have elevated our current Constitution which guided our nation in its formation after Independence, as we are currently approaching fifty years of sovereignty and this new Constitution is meant to exist for decades later, its inclusion as the its first line seeks to influence generations of victims blaming the British for their misfortunes despite the fact that very few citizens today were alive to properly remember what Colonial rule was like.
Seeking public input at the initial phase of constructing this document is a double-edged sword because the Committee seems forced to include elements, which appear to be progressive and forward-thinking, but really are just surface-level elaborations upon our current Constitution that offer no real progression. The fact that so many of these issues have been dealt with at either the legislative or judicial levels, means that most of the suggestions and inclusions are just codifying societal norms at this point, which is fine and something that ought to be done but isn’t as radical or revolutionary to require a brand new Constitution to do so.
To me, it all comes down to the questions posed by the Committee through their questionnaires which make up the bulk of publicly accessed data, and that’s because it is lacking any form of context, both in how it was collected and how it is presented in this report. As an example, according to the Report, there were 255 recommendations categorized as items relating to Accountability and Transparency, and as a result, the working draft reflected this. But let’s say that number was smaller, let’s say only 10 people had recommended it, are they saying that as a Constitutional Reform Committee, they would have just ignored the topic altogether? That would have been ridiculous, but really and truly, it would all boil down to the composition of the group, but the report makes absolutely no attempt to explain the demographics of the persons making these recommendations.
As such, the question of whether or not the Privy Council should be replaced by the CCJ is the most interesting and the most important topic in this public discourse, but not for the more obvious reason most people might think. You see, the side someone falls on in this argument is telling of their opinion on the progression of this country since Independence and how much confidence they have in our institutions and our ability to properly govern and manage our affairs. Essentially, the people who think we should move to the CCJ are confident in our ability to properly adjudicate what is best for the nation, while those persons who are against this feel like we still require the Privy Council as a safety net. And it is out of a better understanding of these perspectives that we can create a Constitution to last another century, but this cannot be achieved through a simple questionnaire.
Probably the most disappointing aspect of this exercise is that at no point did the Committee even consider the possibility of replacing the bicameral Westminster system for our legislature in favour of a system that might be more representative and equal to a diverse nation such as our own. At the end of the day, this new Constitution merely upholds the core ideas and values of the current one and as such offers nothing new in its content to reflect its slightly more flowery language.
You know, in 1985, when legislators in Washington rejected the CDC’s plan to deal with the growing AIDS epidemic, they advised the CDC to “Look pretty and do as little as you can.” And I can’t help but think that this Committee might have been given the same instruction when they set out on this journey. But through their public discourse and inclusion in the process, now they also have a scapegoat for when this project is inevitably shelved. Because I cannot imagine that a draft Constitution this weak can ever be seriously considered for adoption, but maybe the journey was more important than the destination.
Best regards,
Ravi Balgobin Maharaj
