Taking stock of political system

FROM TIME TO TIME we need to take stock of our political system and the way we do things in this developing democracy as compared with the practices of some other more developed democracies.

Quite often citizens compare us unfavourably with our larger neighbour to the north, the United States and call for what they say is greater freedom of the Press and sometimes for the system of committees that vote on the president's recommendations for certain appointments to public office, such as the supreme court and the cabinet.

Some of these comments point to greater public participation in the political process and the use of television to bring these important events to public attention and scrutiny even if the committees operate along partisan lines and excoriate many a candidate who is otherwise suited for the position because of some statement made years before he or she ever thought of entering public service.

The current, sometimes bitter and highly partisan debate on universal health debate in the United States should provide a welcome reality check for those among us hankering after the American way of doing politics.

Whatever its high points, the American political system does not make for easy law-making. The tortuous passage of the current legislation still bogged down in congress, with several proposed bills floating and refloating in and out of this or that committee without any agreement of the two Houses of Congress, makes a good case for urgent reform.

Westminister-based

Our small democracy could not long survive in such circumstances, and we should thank our lucky stars that our system of government is based on the Westminster system which concentrates real and functional legislative power at the centre in the hands of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet.

The late Right Excellent Errol Barrow would never have had his National Insurance Scheme passed into law under a system such as that operating in the United States; nor could the late Prime Minister Tom Adams have legislated his revolutionary Freehold Tenantries Bill which released plantation tenants and their tenantry lands from historical bondage!

There is simply too much fragmentation of political power in the United States system. An overly rigid application of the separation of powers means that the president and his cabinet control the executive power, - the right to "do" things - but they cannot sit in the legislature, which is the body exercising the power to pass the necessary enabling legislation.

The result is that a lot of arm-twisting and deal-making goes on behind the scenes to get even the simplest law passed, and with the members of both houses loosely respecting an even looser system of party discipline, passing laws becomes a nightmare encased in a labyrinth!

It is for these reasons that the civil rights laws took so very long to become law, and if the American system were transplanted into our country, measures such as the Holiday With Pay Act legislation might not yet have seen the light of day, especially given the not- so-distant era of malignant conservatism!

Our constitutional system may be the result of an accident of history, but over the space of three hundred years, as one of our late Governors General reminded us, "we have made it our own".

What we must not now do is to behave like the infamous dog with the bone. All that glitters is not gold, and while we may think that our system is not perfect, and it is not, there are other systems which are so rigid that the passage of obviously desirable and socially cohesive legislation is held captive to special interests within the society.

The American system is one such system, and one wonders how much better off that society would be if their political system reflected the political reality that our system does.

Constructive criticism of our system is one thing, but we must be aware that the grass always appears greener on the other side!