Epilogue: Challenges for Parliamentary and Electoral Reform

• Author: Kirk Meighoo/Peter Jamadar
• Profession: Member of the Democratic National Assembly and the author of Politics in a Half-Made Society: Trinidad and Tobago 1925?2002/Judge of the Supreme Court of Trinidad and Tobago and the author of The Mechanics of Democracy
• Pages: 213-219

Epilogue |213

Epilogue:

Challenges for

Parliamentary and

Electoral Reform

It is hoped that this work will prove important in helping to guide

the development of democratic self-government and increasing the

legitimacy of the goal of genuine democratic reform (the development

of self-government of free and responsible citizen-peers) in Trinidad and

Tobago, and perhaps elsewhere in the region, or even further afield. For

we do believe that the lessons of Trinidad and Tobago’s experience provide

us with our own universal truths, which can help to clarify and to

contribute to the understanding of institutions of government and society

in many other contexts.

We hope that citizens will be better informed as to the type of

government and politics under which they live at present, and the type

of government under which they might like to live. We believe that this

is important for debate to be productive and fruitful. Furthermore, we

hope to have convinced readers that the many expedient formulae and

easily copied institutions that are popularly believed to define democracy

(free and fair elections, national sovereignty, rule of law, consultation,

‘one person, one vote’, separation of powers, majority rule, checks and

balances, and so on) while important, miss the essence of what

democracy is: the self-government of responsible and free citizen-peers,

which institutionally is almost always reflected in an autonomous,

conscientious, representative, and responsible national assembly at the

heart of the system of government, ensuring that the executive governs

responsibly. The question for us remains: how do we effectively move

from our Crown Colony habits, expectations, traditions, and culture,

to arrangements that are more democratic, encouraging greater citizen

responsibility and participation in sovereign and effective self-

government? Any attempt to introduce exotic and fanciful constitutional