RESOLVING THE 6-6 THA ELECTION POLITICAL CRISIS

MENDING THE THA ACT TO MAKE THE NUMBER OF ELECTED ASSEMBLYMEN AN ODD NUMBER WILL NOT SOLVE THE POLITICAL CRISIS IN TOBAGO. 
PARLIAMENT (PNM AND UNC) MUST AMEND AND PASS THE TOBAGO SELF-GOVERNMENT BILL TO CREATE A FREE AND EQUAL UNION BETWEEN TOBAGO AND TRINIDAD! 
The 6:6 tie in the elections to the 12-seat THA has exposed a festering sore in the architecture of the Assembly and the THA Act.
The Political Leader of the PNM is reported as saying:
‘“If it is that the law is required to be adjusted, then we will do that because this deadlock is not easy to unravel. I am awaiting senior counsel advice as to what the law means in this situation and the PNM will follow the law.’
The THA structure in the THA Act is 12 Assemblymen and has been so for a long time. So, the possibility of a tie is not new or sudden. 
Some have suggested that what is needed is to add or remove an Electoral District to have an odd number; one to act as the ‘tie-breaker’.
The political crisis in Tobago is not a mathematical problem. 
Some have suggested that the President can name a Chief Secretary and that 18 -18 in the Parliament was a ‘precedent’.
Well, the law governing the Parliament is the Constitution and the law for the THA is the THA Act. The President can, in her ‘own deliberate judgement’, decide who appears to have the support of the majority of the elected MPs. In the THA, the President CANNOT appoint a Chief Secretary. That is the purview of the Assembly.
In 1996, the UNC-DAC and PNM amended the THA Act to give authority to the President to decide who appears to have the support of a minority of elected Assemblymen and appoint a Minority Leader. With the new crisis of 6:6 tie, now, they can both take the easy way out again and simply increase the number of elected positions to 13 (like was done after 18:18), but this will only be putting a plaster on a deep sore in the politics of Tobago and the country.
Still others are saying what must be done is to pass the Tobago Self-Government Bill now before Parliament because it provides for 15 elected Assemblymen which is just a different odd number from the 13-seat suggestion.
Now, both the PNM and PDP have suggested that the ‘popular vote’ should be used to break the stalemate.  But the electoral system of First-Past-The-Post in all elections in this country, Parliamentary, THA and Local Government rejects any notion of the majority of the Popular Vote.
ALL these proposals cater to and provide for the self-serving  partisan interests of those whose focus is the winning or holding on to positions of power in Tobago.
None of these suggestions will resolve the fundamental issue in the Tobago-Trinidad relationship – Converting the Forced and Unequal Union imposed by the colonial power in 1889 and continued under Independence into a FREE AND EQUAL UNION.
To achieve this fundamental solution to this historic issue of the Trinidad-Tobago relationship which President Richards, on the 50th anniversary of Independence, described as ‘an area of darkness’ in our Constitutional arrangements.
The Constitution (Amendment)(Tobago Self-Government) Bill, 2020 as presently drafted claims to recognise the ‘equality of status’ between both islands and Tobago people’s right ‘to determine, in Tobago, their political status…’. [The Constitution (Amendment) (Tobago Self-Government) Bill, 2020 (ttparliament.org)]
However, the Bill does not go far enough to fully establish a FREE AND EQUAL UNION between Tobago and Trinidad.
While I support Hochoy Charles and the PDP leadership for recognising that this 6:6 tie has created the opportunity to deal with the Self-Government Bill, I suggest that the Bill must be amended to fully recognise the Right to Self-determination for Tobago.
In my submission to the Joint Select Committee in June 2018,[the_foundation_for_the_self.pdf (clydeweatherheadsite.net)] I said:

• In the current conditions of the 21st century, self-determination for any people in a forced and unequal union must include up to the right to end such union – to secede. This right cannot exist for one but not the other ‘people’ in Trinidad AND Tobago.
• To be clear, the right to self-determination, up to and including the right to secession, does not mean that the right will necessarily be exercised by the people of either ‘island’. It is no more a certainty than is divorce in a marriage between 2 individuals, merely because the right to divorce is inherent in the right to marry.
• This notion of self-determination was included in the Constitution of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla and after the departure of Anguilla is retained in the St. Kitts-Nevis Constitution. A two-thirds majority of people voting in a referendum for secession is the mechanism established in that instance.

This crisis has now imposed on both the PNM and UNC yet again the opportunity, more, the responsibility to solve this Constitutional ‘area of darkness’ once and for all and establish a Free and Equal Union between Tobago and Trinidad in the interest of the country and the people of both Trinidad and Tobago.  
Let us see if our Parliament will rise to the occasion and provide a real solution and not just another quick fix like was done in 2013.
 
Clyde Weatherhead
A Citizen Seeking Real Solutions and
Fighting for Democratic Renewal
 
27 January 2021

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