Wayne Munroe's wrongheaded notion

Thu, Sep 17th 2015, 10:20 AM

A friend recalls a recent visit to the workshop of a government agency on a workday between 11 a.m. and noon. What he saw and describes is symptomatic of the dire state of the country and the collapse of basic order in numerous areas of political and national life.

 

Two government employees were already passed out, perhaps hung over from the night before. Other employees were getting drunk, their liquor, bottles and cups, on open display. A few others were under a tree playing dominoes. None of these employees sought to hide their unprofessional conduct from onlookers, sadly symptomatic of just how egregious are things.

 

The coarsening of public life, the contempt for standards and conventions, the disdain for law and order, the sneering disregard for rules and civility are normative, the order of the day, rife in our culture, permeating every level of society, including the Cabinet of The Bahamas.

The collapse of standards is made worse when those who should know better say foolish and asinine things off the top of their heads about how our system of government should operate. Such statements gain currency and lead to the further decline of treasured conventions necessary for good order and governance.

The current PLP government has been blatantly contemptuous of parliamentary conventions and norms of Cabinet government, led by a feckless prime minister, who, despite being dean of the House of Assembly and the longest serving Cabinet minister still in government, has presided over a precipitous decline in basic standards of good governance in our parliamentary democracy.

Despite obviously misleading the House on a matter related to a fire at a dormitory at BAMSI, Deputy Prime Minister Philip Davis, in a spectacular display of farce, concocted a convoluted explanation for his breaching a basic standard of conduct for a minister. Davis should have resigned or been fired by the prime minister.

The recent matter of Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe openly speaking against a Cabinet decision relative of Baha Mar is but the latest example of a PLP Cabinet minister nakedly and wilfully flaunting longstanding conventions, in this instance, the cherished doctrine of collective responsibility.

Collective

Wilchcombe publicly disagreed with a Cabinet conclusion, characterizing as wrong a decision for which he as a minister shares collective responsibility. If he felt that strongly that the decision was wrong and that he could not agree with it, the honorable course was to resign. With Wilchcombe having spoken publicly against a Cabinet conclusion the prime minister should have made him retract his statement or fire him.

When Carlton Francis, who served in the early Pindling Cabinets, could not in conscience agree to a Cabinet decision on casino gambling, he resigned and publicly argued against the decision. He took the honorable course of action.

In Britain, Canada, Jamaica, and other countries which share our system of Cabinet government, the conventions about collective responsibility are quite clear and detailed in Cabinet manuals, including that ministers are collectively responsible to Parliament and should not disclose how he or she or another Cabinet minister voted on a matter in Cabinet.

When a minister cannot share in the collective responsibility of a decision, no matter how he or she may have voted, the honorable course of action is to resign, a course that has been followed by many ministers throughout the world that share our system of Cabinet government.

Despite these long-held and well-known conventions, attorney Wayne Munroe has now concocted his own version of our system. Munroe, recently appointed a Queen’s Counsel on the advice of the prime minister and who has now abandoned the DNA for the PLP, is recognized for his legal skills and as someone who presumably should understand our system of Cabinet government.

Munroe recently stated: “You hear a lot of media reports that [Prime Minister Perry Christie] can’t control his Cabinet. Well he is not supposed to be able to. He is first among equals. People who say things like that don’t really understand our system.”

Munroe is dead wrong. A primary function of the prime minister in our system is the coordination and discipline of his Cabinet. It is Munroe who clearly does not understand our system.

Flaunting

Had a minister in British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government publicly disagreed with a Cabinet decision he would either have to retract his statement or resign. The notion that a prime minister should not control his Cabinet is a recipe for chaos and would weaken our system of government, with ministers flaunting the decisions of Cabinet, undermining the very strength and fundamental logic of Cabinet government.

Imagine the confusion if public officers, foreign governments, foreign investors and others believe that a Cabinet conclusion can be flaunted by a given minister. Even as the government had taken a clear negotiating stance on Baha Mar, Wilchcombe was undermining his colleagues.

Imagine if the foreign minister is overseas negotiating an important matter with a foreign government after a Cabinet decision has been taken, while back home another minister is publicly undermining that position. The foreign government would deem us as laughable and unserious. Is this the kind of anarchy and confusion that Munroe proposes?

In our system, the prime minister is the most important member of Cabinet and that is why we call him or her prime (or first), and he or she has important constitutional powers including certain powers of appointment.

Still, executive authority under our constitution is vested in the British monarch (article 71) and is exercised by her representative the governor general. That is why no legislation by Parliament becomes law until it is signed by the governor general.

Article 72 of our constitution provides that the Cabinet “shall have the general direction and control of the government of The Bahamas and shall be collectively responsible to Parliament”.

The prime minister’s chief responsibility is the coordination and discipline of the Cabinet where he or she is primus inter pares (first among equals).

A prime minister is expected to provide leadership for his or her colleagues; is responsible for the agenda and conduct of the proceedings of the Cabinet as well as discipline; is responsible for the overall coordination of the government; and is the chief spokesperson for the government.

Cabinet debates various issues and comes to a conclusion or conclusions which are then binding on the relevant minister and all of his or her colleagues as well as other relevant agencies of the government.

 

Once a Cabinet conclusion is arrived at, neither the prime minister nor any other individual minister can legally overturn, reverse or vary such decision. However, the Cabinet can collectively revisit any previous conclusion.

 

It is the prime minister who has the responsibility to ensure and enforce discipline in the actions and communications of a minister about a decision which Cabinet has taken.

Fundamental

Yes, ministers share a fundamental equality. But this does not mean that a minister – including the prime minister – gets to say or do whatever he or she pleases after a Cabinet decision has been made.

Munroe stated: “They think we have a president. We do not. The fact that the PLP singularly appears to be able to understand, that is what caused me to join them.” Munroe is right about us not having a president. But notion that the PLP “singularly appears to be able to understand” this is laughable given Perry Christie’s pseudo-presidential style.

One example is when Christie mused about the creation of a standard or coat of arms for the prime minister in competition with the monarch’s representative.

He was telegraphing a U.S.-style presidential mindset that is foreign to our parliamentary system and the concept of collective Cabinet government. Christie seemed to have forgotten that he is head of a government that is collectively responsible to the head of state, to Parliament and to the people.

Since independence the prime minister of The Bahamas has been frequently and incorrectly referred to in the media, by some commentators and even by various politicians as the nation’s chief executive. The constitution confers no such title on a prime minister.

Day after day the local media – mostly the broadcast media – glibly and inaccurately refer to the prime minister as “the nation’s chief”.

Much of this is due to our relatively recent and limited history of Cabinet government and as an independent country. With the cult of personality and strongman politics of Sir Lynden Pindling we inflated in our political consciousness the actual powers of a prime minister, whose power, in significant ways, is considerably less than those of a U.S. president. Sir Lynden was often called “chief”.

Our proximity to the U.S. and ignorance about our constitution has resulted in a misunderstanding of our parliamentary system and Cabinet government and in the repeated regurgitation of factual errors.

Munroe also noted, as observed in an editorial in this journal, that “he decided to join the PLP because it seems to be the only party that appreciates the proper role of the prime minister”.

If this is why he joined the PLP, it seems the most specious of reasons, as Christie has often abysmally failed to take seriously his role as prime minister, most especially enforcing Cabinet discipline, including the firing of Davis who clearly misled the House.

Munroe seems to have his own version of how our system of Cabinet government should work. It is clearly at variance with various conventions of Westminster that we have adopted and have honored because they have been seen to work for generations. When men of intelligence upend, mangle or degrade treasured norms, it demonstrates how precipitous is a country’s decline.

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