EDITORIAL - Mr Holness right on Senate resignations

Andrew Holness last week used a tactic that was part of the arsenal of Eric Williams, the late prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago.

It shouldn't have had to come to that. Except that there are persons in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) seemingly intent on expropriating the mandate Mr Holness won a week ago. Lest we forget, 57 per cent of party delegates voted for him.

Dr Williams, during his more than quarter-century hold on the Trinidadian government, it is said, never had to fire a Cabinet. They always 'resigned'.

The claim is that on being drafted into the Cabinet, ministers initialled not only their instruments of appointment, but also undated letters of resignation which Dr Williams kept in his files for their appropriate use.

Having been challenged and prevailing, Mr Holness quite rightly expected that he would be given a free hand to shape the JLP. If he is a perceptive leader, Mr Holness would be mindful that the greater responsibility was his to lead the healing in his party, which would preclude wholesale alienation of those who opposed him.

CONSTITUTIONAL LOOPHOLE

Not inappropriately, in our view, Mr Holness signalled that he would welcome the resignations, en bloc, of the eight senators he caused to be appointed. The Jamaican Constitution does not provide either the prime minister or the leader of the Opposition with the power to insist upon any such revocation.

In the event, two senators resisted: Arthur Williams and Christopher Tufton, the latter a front-line supporter of Mr Holness' challenger, Audley Shaw. During the campaign, Dr Tufton scathingly questioned Mr Holness' character.

It turns out that Mr Tufton appeared to have forgotten that Mr Holness, like Dr Williams, possessed their signed, but undated, letters of resignation.

Arthur Williams has explained that those letters were to ensure that JLP's senators did not defect and give the Government the two-thirds parliamentary majority required to take Jamaica into the criminal and civil jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice. Mr Williams questions the moral and, perhaps, constitutional efficacy of using the resignations for purposes "unconnected to any issue with the Caribbean Court of Justice".

POLICY SUPPORT

By signing these letters, Mr Williams and his colleagues clearly accepted the principle that a leader is entitled to an assurance that appointees would not depart from fundamental party policies.

Mr Williams misses the point. For while they parade the absence of constitutional power of leaders to revoke Senate appointments and highlight the Upper House as a deliberative forum, the fact that the the group signed the resignation letters underlines their appreciation of a party leader to be assured of the policy support of his appointees.

It might be useful to consider this matter from the perspective of a head of government. Suppose a prime minister, short of talent in the House and needing specialised skills to oversee portfolios, appointed, via the Senate, four ministers who are technocrats from the private sector, with the intent that their jobs would be relatively short term. If those ministers, at the completion of their jobs, declined to resign, the prime minister would have limited options in shaping his or her government. This flaw in Section 42 of the Constitution is in need of fixing.

In Trinidad and Tobago, a fifth of its 31 senators are independent members appointed at the sole discretion of the country's president. That may be a model for Jamaica to consider.

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