Clarifying Robinson's approach: An unfair criticism

Dr Win­ford James Max Al­bert and I con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sions on the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Ques­tion. There is a per­sis­tent po­lit­i­cal crit­i­cism of ANR Robin­son which de­serves to be re­vis­it­ed—not sen­ti­men­tal­ly, but his­tor­i­cal­ly. Robin­son's Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion won 33 of the 36 par­lia­men­tary seats in De­cem­ber 1986. He there­fore pos­sessed an ex­tra­or­di­nary leg­isla­tive ma­jor­i­ty at pre­cise­ly the time when ex­pe­ri­ence was ex­pos­ing se­ri­ous weak­ness­es in Act 37 of 1980, the leg­is­la­tion which had re-es­tab­lished the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. The crit­i­cism has been sim­ple and po­lit­i­cal­ly ef­fec­tive: Robin­son had 33 seats; Act 37 was de­fec­tive; and he could have fixed it. The first two propo­si­tions are true. The con­clu­sion is not. It is un­de­ni­able that when we fol­low the par­lia­men­tary record, a so­phis­ti­cat­ed strat­e­gy emerges. The ev­i­dence in­di­cates that his gov­ern­ment was not con­tent mere­ly to use 33 votes to pass an­oth­er Act. Rather, it was at­tempt­ing to es­tab­lish the con­sti­tu­tion­al foun­da­tions for a To­ba­go arrange­ment ca­pa­ble of sur­viv­ing af­ter those 33 votes—and Robin­son him­self—were gone. That ob­ser­va­tion mat­ters. To­ba­go's ex­pe­ri­ence un­der Act 37 had al­ready demon­strat­ed that par­lia­men­tary en­act­ment was not syn­ony­mous with po­lit­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty. Pow­ers could be nar­row­ly in­ter­pret­ed, func­tions frus­trat­ed ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly, and Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment ma­chin­ery used to in­trude up­on the As­sem­bly's au­thor­i­ty. What To­ba­go re­quired, there­fore, was not sim­ply an­oth­er Act. But a To­ba­go au­thor­i­ty ap­proach­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al im­preg­nabil­i­ty: an arrange­ment suf­fi­cient­ly rea­soned, ground­ed, and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed that could with­stand chang­ing gov­ern­ments, ad­min­is­tra­tive ob­struc­tion, and hos­tile po­lit­i­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion. En­ter Dr Brins­ley Sama­roo. Sama­roo was a his­to­ri­an, con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ar, Min­is­ter of De­cen­tral­i­sa­tion, and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. In April 1988, while pi­lot­ing leg­is­la­tion ad­dress­ing THA de­fi­cien­cies, he made a dis­tinc­tion whose im­por­tance has been un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. To­ba­go, he ar­gued, was not mere­ly about de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion. It was about de­vo­lu­tion. De­cen­tral­i­sa­tion in­volved re­spon­si­bil­i­ties be­ing dis­trib­uted down­wards by Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. De­vo­lu­tion, Sama­roo ex­plained, in­volved trans­fer­ring au­thor­i­ty from 'one top to an­oth­er top'—from one gov­ern­men­tal au­thor­i­ty to an­oth­er. For To­ba­go's his­toric as­pi­ra­tion to in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment, that was an im­por­tant in­tel­lec­tu­al pro­gres­sion. To­ba­go was not be­ing con­cep­tu­alised mere­ly as an­oth­er lo­cal au­thor­i­ty await­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive favours from Port-of-Spain, but as a gov­ern­men­tal au­thor­i­ty to which pow­er could prop­er­ly be trans­ferred. Act 37 had taught Robin­son a dif­fi­cult les­son: leg­is­la­tion alone could be frus­trat­ed by po­lit­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive pow­er. His re­sponse was to go deep­er. Pamela Nichol­son sup­plied an in­valu­able part of this his­to­ry in Par­lia­ment in 1996. She re­called that the NAR gov­ern­ment de­ter­mined that it would ad­dress what she called 'the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.' Those words are im­por­tant. The ques­tion had moved be­yond what ad­di­tion­al func­tions To­ba­go should re­ceive. It had be­come: what should be the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween To­ba­go, its As­sem­bly and the na­tion­al State? When the ar­gu­ment was ad­vanced that con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form should not pro­ceed piece­meal, Robin­son ac­cept­ed it. His gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion chaired by for­mer Chief Jus­tice Sir Isaac Hy­atali. With 33 seats, Robin­son could have dri­ven an­oth­er To­ba­go statute through Par­lia­ment. In­stead, his gov­ern­ment sought a con­sti­tu­tion­al foun­da­tion up­on which a durable set­tle­ment could rest. It took longer. Hy­atali vin­di­cat­ed the premise. The Com­mis­sion con­clud­ed that Act 37 had fall­en short of giv­ing full ef­fect to the in­ten­tions un­der­ly­ing To­ba­go's gov­ern­men­tal arrange­ments. It iden­ti­fied dif­fi­cul­ties in­volv­ing ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty, the Ac­count­ing Of­fi­cer, un­spent bal­ances, Cen­tral Ad­min­is­tra­tive Ser­vices To­ba­go, and Sec­re­taries ex­er­cis­ing min­is­te­r­i­al-type func­tions with­out sat­is­fac­to­ry statu­to­ry foun­da­tions. More pro­found­ly, Hy­atali con­tem­plat­ed re­place­ment arrange­ments recog­nis­ing self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go with­in the frame­work of the uni­tary State. It even con­tem­plat­ed To­ba­go prepar­ing draft leg­is­la­tion with­in an ap­pro­pri­ate sphere for con­sid­er­a­tion through the na­tion­al con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­chin­ery. And here­in lies the weak­ness of the old po­lit­i­cal ac­cu­sa­tion. Robin­son's 33 seats gave him the pow­er to en­act. But en­act­ment was not en­trench­ment; par­lia­men­tary strength was not con­sti­tu­tion­al dura­bil­i­ty. The ev­i­dence sug­gests that Robin­son was at­tempt­ing to con­vert a tem­po­rary po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage in­to some­thing more per­ma­nent for To­ba­go. He had the num­bers. He was search­ing for im­preg­nabil­i­ty. But con­sti­tu­tion­al ar­chi­tec­ture re­quires some­thing par­lia­men­tary arith­metic can­not guar­an­tee: time. The NAR frac­tured while the con­sti­tu­tion­al work con­tin­ued. Hy­atali re­port­ed in 1990. Then, on Ju­ly 27, his­to­ry en­tered Par­lia­ment with guns. Armed in­sur­gents stormed Par­lia­ment. Robin­son was shot, beat­en, and held hostage. Gov­ern­ment it­self be­came cap­tive, and the Re­pub­lic was plunged in­to an un­prece­dent­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis. The painstak­ing work on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form was over­whelmed. Hy­atali's To­ba­go rec­om­men­da­tions nev­er re­ceived the par­lia­men­tary con­sid­er­a­tion they de­served. Robin­son sub­se­quent­ly re­mind­ed Par­lia­ment that the Com­mis­sion re­port­ed in the very month of the at­tempt­ed coup. By 1991 Robin­son was out of gov­ern­ment. The op­por­tu­ni­ty rep­re­sent­ed by those 33 seats had dis­ap­peared. But To­ba­go's un­fin­ished busi­ness had not. Then his­to­ry pro­duced an irony. The 1995 gen­er­al elec­tion re­turned 17 UNC mem­bers, 17 PNM mem­bers and two NAR rep­re­sen­ta­tives from To­ba­go. Robin­son no longer had 33. He had two. Yet those two seats de­ter­mined which par­ty could gov­ern. In the next col­umn, we will con­clude our dis­cus­sion by lay­ing out the rest of the con­text, show­ing how the crit­i­cism against Robin­son is not jus­ti­fied. Dr Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment and pol­i­tics in T&T and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try.