The Challenges of Constitutional Reform

• Author: Hamid A. Ghany
• Profession: Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine
• Pages: 119-146

6.

The Challenges of

Constitutional Reform

Commonwealth Caribbean constitutions, with the exception of Guyana

since 1980, have all been based on a Westminster–Whitehall foundation.

That foundation was laid out of an evolutionary process that started

with the Old Representative System, the Crown Colony System, the

New Representative System, post-Second World War Representative

and Responsible Government, and either independence or associated

statehood and then independence, as the case may be.

The systems of government that are based on the Westminster–

Whitehall model are indeed indigenous because they have evolved in

the region to the point of independence. There are difficulties associated

with trying to change the model precisely because the Westminster–

Whitehall model can be regarded as the indigenous system of government

for the Commonwealth Caribbean due to its evolution as opposed to its

importation.

Perhaps the best example of why there appears to be a conundrum

in deciding whether countries in the Commonwealth Caribbean region

are going to reform a constitution that was imported into its culture and

society or one that is considered indigenous can best be captured by

the following statement made by Dr Eric Williams on July 19, 1955 at a

public meeting in Woodford Square, Port of Spain, Trinidad, before he had

entered electoral politics:

The Colonial Office does not need to examine its second hand colonial

constitutions. It has a constitution at hand which it can apply immediately

to Trinidad and Tobago. That is the British Constitution.1

At the same meeting he also said:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I suggest to you that the time has come when the

British Constitution, suitably modified, can be applied to Trinidad and

Tobago. After all, if the British Constitution is good enough for Great Britain,

it should be good enough for Trinidad and Tobago.2

Constitutional Development in the Commonwealth Caribbean

120

Williams’s advocacy of the British Constitution in a suitably modified

format was his way of saying that the British constitutional formula was

one that should be adopted because there was no indigenous system of

government.

Williams’s entire stewardship as chief minister, premier and prime

minister of Trinidad and Tobago represented a defence of the British

Constitution suitably modified and when the greatest opportunity of all

presented itself for constitution reform in 1971 when his People’s National

Movement (PNM) won all 36 seats in the House of Representatives at the

general election, he adopted the approach of engaging in a further suitable

modification of the existing constitution which was already a suitably

modified version of the British Constitution itself.

Williams’s manner of thinking can be contrasted with his colleague

premier in Jamaica, Norman Manley, who said in the Jamaican House of

Representatives in January 1962:

Let us not make the mistake of describing as colonial, institutions which

are part and parcel of the heritage of this country. If we have any confidence

in our own individuality and our own personality we would absorb these

things and incorporate them into our being and turn them to our own use

as part of the heritage we are not ashamed of.3

Manley was not speaking about importing the British Constitution and

converting it into local usage in the way that Williams had advocated,

but rather he was urging that the existing institutions of the colonial era,

which evolved as part of Jamaica’s development, should not be regarded

as colonial, but rather as indigenous.

These institutions were installed as part of the colonial evolution. Yet,

Norman Manley was describing it as a ‘mistake’ to regard these institutions

as being ‘colonial’. He preferred to bless them as being part of the ‘heritage’

of Jamaica.

The primary reason for the juxtaposition of these two views as expressed

by two leaders, who were part of the independence movement in the late

1950s and early 1960s, will provide a better understanding of the difficulties

that have been experienced with the prospect of making any meaningful

constitutional reform in the post-independence era.

Are constitutions being reformed that have been imported into

Commonwealth Caribbean societies or are the independence constitutions

already indigenous to these societies? For Williams, the argument was

that if it was good enough for Great Britain, it would be good enough for

Trinidad and Tobago. For Manley, it was not colonial, but rather part of