I spent most of Super Bowl weekend mentally revisiting the highly publicized 14-hour debacle that recently had passed for a House debate centered on the Leader of the Opposition’s motion of no confidence in this country’s prime minister. On November 20, last year, the motion’s presenter Mr. Philip J. Pierre had read out to the self-named “local media practitioners” the motion’s purpose.
Perchance there were among them some who, cognizant of the current composition of the House, saw only madness in his latest initiative, a bridge to nowhere, so to speak, Pierre hinted at a hiding in plain sight plan behind his perceived insanity: “The motion and the anticipated debate will articulate the deep concerns, anxieties and the feelings of hopelessness among large sections of the Saint Lucian society about the uncaring and irresponsible manner that the business of this country is currently managed.”
Last Tuesday, Pierre and his colleagues in the opposition seats sought to elaborate on the above-quoted press statement. Member after opposition member alleged the prime minister had conducted public affairs in a manner that has “undermined our Constitution, its conventions and practices, led to abuse of public office, unreasonable and irrational decision making, unsustainable fiscal deficits, squandering of the financial resources of the state, and which have resulted in a lack of public trust and confidence in his leadership of the government of Saint Lucia.”
It has occurred to me that if indeed the prime minister and his Cabinet truly had demonstrably “undermined our Constitution” that would of itself be enough reason to remove from office not only Allen M. Chastanet but also complicit members of his Cabinet and public servants. I couldn’t help wondering when it was that Pierre and his associates discovered an appreciation for the Saint Lucia Constitution. Considering their record in government, it had to be after 6 June 2016!
We need not go into the twenty-something other allegations in Pierre’s motion of no confidence. All had earlier been officially debated in the usual fashion; most of them tossed around from election-time platforms that knew not the difference between fact and outrageous hyperbole. Small wonder a member on the government side had dismissed the motion as “full of value judgments, uninformed opinions and wishful thinking,” consequently unworthy of parliament’s time.
As already we know, the Speaker stubbornly disagreed, on the discombobulating basis that Section 53 of the Constitution, bolstered by Section 21 of the House Standing Orders, authorized him and the Senate president “to make rules on any matter that we may so deem.”
In all events this is what Section 53 says: “Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, the Senate and the House may each regulate its own procedure and in particular make rules for the orderly conduct of its own proceedings.” Which is like having a law that restricts motorists to driving only on the left side of the road but leaves them free to wear whatever they wish behind the wheel.
To cite the general authority of the Speaker, at sections 88 (1-2): “The Speaker shall have power to regulate the conduct of business in all matters not provided for in these Standing Orders. The decision in all cases for which these Standing Orders do not provide, shall lie within the discretion of the Speaker and shall not be open to challenge.”
As I understand it, there is nothing in the immediately above that leaves the Speaker free “to make our rules on any matter that we so deem.” (Emphasis mine.) As for Section 21 of the House Standing Orders, what it says is: “Subject to section 48 of the Saint Lucia Constitution [which deals with restrictions with regard to certain financial measures] and to these Standing Orders, any member may propose by way of motion any matter for debate in the House.” Which to my mind leaves much unsaid, such as whether a motion will be entertained that questions the Speaker’s haircut.
Section 88 of the Standing Orders (and notwithstanding the Interpretation Act), the Labour Party opposition had for several years argued its peculiar interpretation—not the Speaker’s—is the right one when it comes to what the Constitution says must take place should a vacancy arise in the office of deputy Speaker: Parliament shall elect a replacement as soon as convenient. Four simple words—“as soon as convenient”—the intended interpretation of which, hopefully, will some time this month be determined by a court of law, all thanks to the ever adventurous Martinus Francois!
Mention of which reminds me of the Speaker’s decision last Tuesday to cite court precedents in support of his ruling. I’ve been wondering what might’ve happened had a member on the government side, say the MP for Castries Central, Mrs Sarah Flood-Beaubrun, stood on a point of order and proceeded to say: “Mr. Speaker, like you, I am in another life a lawyer. As such, I wish to point out the cases you’ve just cited have not been fully tested. Who’s to say what may have happened had they come before the CCJ or the Privy Council?”
An argument involving two lawyers would likely have ensued, with the Speaker as judge, jury and executioner, effectively turning the House chamber into a courtroom. To my mind, the Speaker who, let’s not forget, has the final word in all House disputes, could more properly have cited the authority (whether or not misinterpreted) afforded him by the Standing Orders of the House and without further ado moved on. After all, a dissatisfied MP has the option either to accept the Speaker’s ruling or to resort to the courts, the appropriate place for citing legal precedents established by judges—not by former magistrates in House Speaker robes.
To elaborate: the House and the law courts operate by respective procedures laid down since colonial times. Which brings to mind V.S. Naipaul’s line from The Middle Passage that “nothing was created in the British West Indies. No civilization as in Spanish America, no great revolution as in Haiti or the American colonies. There were only plantations, prosperity, decline, neglect: the size of the islands called for nothing else.” As for our own Derek Walcott, without fear of contradiction he writes in What the Twilight Says: “The pride of the colonial [that’s you and me, dear reader] in the culture of his mother country was fiercer than her true children’s, because the colonial feared to lose her. The most conservative and prejudiced redoubts of imperialism are in those who have acquired that patina through strenuous reverence: her judges and, ironically enough, her artists.”
We fight one another over the meaning of “convenient” and lines from documents never written with slaves in mind. Deny it if you wish, sling every kweyol pejorative at the tombstones of the immortal Walcott and Naipaul—even as we persist in living by rules and conventions handed down from on high, rules that have little in common with our natural existence. How many more times will we talk about constitutional reform and then carry on conducting our most important affairs as if indeed Saint Lucia was still a British colony? A plantation?
Naipaul again: “History is built around achievement and creation; and nothing was created in the West Indies.” Of his time in Trinidad, (we know it’s equally true of this Rock of Sages!), Naipaul writes: “Every person of eminence was held to be crooked and contemptible. We lived in a society which denied itself heroes . . . It was a place where a recurring word of abuse was ‘conceited,’ an expression of the resentment felt of anyone who possessed unusual skills. Such skills were not required by a society which produced nothing, never had to prove its worth, and was never called upon to be efficient . . . Generosity, the admiration of equal for equal, was therefore unknown; it was a quality I knew only from books found only in England.”
And finally there’s the esteemed English novelist and historian James Anthony Froude—often cited both by Walcott and Naipaul—whose recollections in The English in the West Indies suggest why we are the way we are; why we cannot free our minds of notions altogether alien to our aspirations; why we dress up for “official” and other events as if in anticipation of heavy snow; why we carry umbrellas around rain or sun. Why we like it so!
Writes Froude: “What did America offer to those who joined her which we refused to give, or neglected to give? Was it that Great Britain did not take her colonies into partnership at all? Was it that while in the United States the blood circulated freely from the heart to the extremities, so that if one member suffered all the body suffered with it, our colonies were simply (as they used to be called) ‘plantations,’ offshoots from the old stock, set down as circumstances had dictated in various parts of the globe—vitally detached and left to grow or to wither according to their own inherent strength?”
Froude also speaks of pirates, adventurers, buccaneers, corsairs, privateers sent by the mother country at various times to govern its plantations. “Looking to the West Indies only,” Froude recalls, “we took possession of those islands when they were of supreme importance in our great wrestle with Spain and France. We were fighting then for the liberties of the human race. The Spaniards had destroyed the original Carib and Indian inhabitants. We induced thousands of our own fellow-countrymen to venture life and fortune in the occupation of our then vital conquests. For two centuries we furnished them with black servants whom we purchased on the African coast, and carried over and sold there, making our own profits out of the trade, and the colonists prospered themselves and poured wealth and strength into the empire of which they were an integral part.
A change passed over the spirit of the age. Liberty assumed a new dress. We found slavery to be a crime; we released our bondmen; we broke their chains as we proudly described it to ourselves; we compensated the owners, so far as money could compensate, for the entire dislocation of a state of society which we had ourselves created . . . The West Indies ceased to be of commercial, they ceased to be of political, moment to us, and we left them to their own resources. The modern English idea is that everyone must take care of himself. The State is not to help them; the State is not to interfere with them unless for political or party reasons it happens to be convenient. As we treat ourselves, we treat our colonies . . .”
Oh what a way we’ve traveled; from Saint Lucia’s House of Assembly to a time in the 1800s, soon after the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean. Still we cling to the remnants of the chains that once bound us—almost as if hell-bent on ensuring “nothing was created in the West Indies,” and nothing ever will be. Not now, not ever. Oh, I almost forgot to mention: Froude’s The English in the West Indies was published in 1888!
