A chief characteristic of globalization is time-space compression, one expression of which is a generalized CNN effect, namely the capacity of news media, nationally or internationally, to report in real time and pressure policy makers to make quick decisions in a particular direction. For political operatives, these are treacherous conditions, which require much anticipatory research and studied and cautious comments.
My cursory investigation of how we arrived at prorogation has shown deficiencies in all the above areas and suggests that in the future, our political actors need to be much more deliberative.
Firstly, though embedded in our constitution, both the proposed no-confidence motion and the prorogation response came as if out of the blue. Events began with what appeared to me spontaneous ruminations from Mr. Moses Nagamootoo, frustrated with how matters were proceeding in the National Assembly.
On Wednesday 25th June 2014, the Stabroek News reported that the vice-chairperson of the AFC had stated the previous Monday that his party was seriously considering moving a no-confidence motion against the Ramotar government because of its lack of accountability. These comments caught the imagination of a good portion of the public also disappointed with the operation of parliament, particularly since 2011 elections.
The story was also too good for the media to let go and a small content analysis below of the published articles on the subject from only the Stabroek News is indicative.
25 June 2014: AFC considering no-confidence motion against gov’t – Nagamootoo; 27 June 2014: APNU to discuss no-confidence motion against gov’t; 28 June 2014: President says ready to face no-confidence motion; 28 June 2014: AFC says getting positive feedback on move for no-confidence motion; 2July 2014: APNU to meet AFC on no-confidence motion.
Considering the magnitude of what was being proposed, just about a month and a half later (8 August 2014) AFC filed the no-confidence motion.
Yet, in his June 25th comment below, Mr. Nagamootoo appeared more to be pleading for cooperation rather than seeking parliamentary confrontation.
“We are prepared to engage the minority government on all issues and we are prepared to make reasonable compromises, that would be compromises to take the process forward, … we put a roadmap on how it could be actualized which was a compromise, but this government has not seen it fit to do the same …. we want engagement and that these discussions need to be between the leaders and be done through parliamentary engagement”.
He also appeared extremely tentative; quick to point out that the motion could only be successful if it was also supported by APNU and needless to say, APNU was caught totally off guard.
However, it was compelled, by the spontaneous support of many of its supporters for this kind of radical action against the PPP/C, to give public support for the motion. Furthermore, not to be upstaged by the AFC, it groped for a policy and finally landed up with a somewhat more vigorous, if practically diversionary, insistence on early local government elections!
But the story of unpreparedness does not end there. By the Thursday of the very week that Mr. Nagamootoo made his revelation, “a visibly perturbed Ramotar” was daring the opposition to move a no-confidence motion, saying let them pass it and we will be ready to deal with the consequences. (“Gov’t ready to deal with no-confidence fallout –Ramotar”, SN: 26/06/14).
We know now that the president failed to keep his promise to deal with the consequences and instead hit upon a way of circumventing the motion by prorogation. Mr. Nagamootoo, seemingly caught off guard by this unusual response, became even more desultory. “If the motion comes, you don’t, like a lil boy, say, ‘I ain’t playing… If you bring your motion I will bring cannons. … You don’t use political blackmail. Presidents don’t behave that way.” (“AFC warns of moves to govern without parliament”, SN: 07/11/2014).
Well, the president did prorogue parliament and the opposition (more so the AFC) must be partly blamed for not establishing proper mechanisms to be able to anticipate all the reasonably foreseeable ramifications of their unusual proposal. Below I present a case that is illustrative, in more than one respect, of the kind of approach we need to adopt in these novel circumstances. In anticipation of the 6 May 2010 British national elections, public opinion polls were suggesting that no political party could win a majority of seats and that there might well be a ‘hung’ parliament. In advance of the election, Prime Minister Gordon Brown asked the Cabinet Secretary to codify the unwritten constitutional ‘conventions’ – i.e. the rules of behaviour accepted as obligatory by all those concerned in the working of the constitution – into the Cabinet Office manual that would then govern the operations of the public service. A draft of the relevant section concerning elections, which includes discussion of a possible process by which the political parties in the Commons could explore alternative government configurations within a ‘hung’ parliament with the help of public servants, was submitted to a select committee of Parliament.
The committee provided its recommended changes. All political parties made public commitments to ensure that the Queen not be forced to take sides or be seen in the public’s eyes as supporting either the current government or any one political party, and to ensure that Parliament be given an opportunity to fulfill its role as the ‘electoral college’ for the country.
The process …was about ensuring that Parliament would have sufficient time to choose a government, that opposition parties would get the necessary support … to explore government formation options, including the possibility of forming a ‘coalition’ government to replace the Brown government, and of ensuring that the Brown government would remain limited by the ‘caretaker’ government limits and therefore not bind future governments not just during the election but until Parliament had an opportunity to express its confidence in either that government or in another (Bruce M. Hicks -2010- “British and Canadian Experience with the Royal Prerogative,” Canadian Parliamentary Review).
Had the possibility of prorogation been brought into the public domain earlier the PPP/C would not have felt clever in utilizing it. Since the opposition would have had the opportunity to make it clear that it would not deal with the regime if it prorogued the parliament, the latter certainly would not have been able to make its inane claim that the intent of its action was to encourage political dialogue. Timely public discourse would also have allowed for more than the kind of knee-jerk responses stated above.
Proper preparation, anticipation and judicious consideration and discourse should be the hallmark of political actors in our information age.
