Political party reform

Thu, Aug 11th 2016, 12:04 AM

The Conservative Party in the United Kingdom is one of the more successful political parties in history. The Tories' success is due in large measure to its internal culture and conventions, party structures and party discipline.
There is much that the major Bahamas political parties can learn from how the Tories organize themselves and change leaders. This is especially so given the dismal state and vast dysfunction within the PLP and the FNM.
Both parties are saddled with highly unpopular leaders clinging to power in organizations stymied by internal irregularities and poorly functioning internal democracy. FNM Council meetings, conventions and the organization of branches make a mockery of democracy.
Within the PLP, maximum leader Emperor Perry Christie is loathed to hold a convention, having held off as long as he could and nearly until the last moment. He throws tantrums and is angered that anyone should challenge him for the leadership.
Despite a profound and deepening lack of trust in either of the major parties, the FNM and PLP continue to avoid the need for internal reform, further alienating the mass of voters, who now view both parties as private clubs organized to protect and advance the narrow interests of a select few party insiders and their financiers.
Neither party is genuinely interested in strong party and campaign finance laws. Neither partly is likely to address corruption in government if elected at the next general election. Cynicism by voters will only grow.
The FNM brand is near collapse, with the sense that there is now little distinction between the parties on issues such as corruption and a lack of democratic accountability.
In the UK, the Conservatives have demonstrated remarkable flexibility in jettisoning failed or unpopular leaders with unsentimental and ruthless dispatch, while in The Bahamas we treat our political heads as chieftains owed obeisance.

Legendary
Despite becoming the first British female prime minister, and having carried her party to victory in three general elections, the legendary Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, who had grown increasingly imperious and arrogant, was dumped by her party because of her growing unpopularity in Britain.
Thatcher's political decline gained momentum with the resignation of key Cabinet members, including Sir Geoffrey Howe, a mild-mannered Tory grandee and Thatcher loyalist.
His temperately delivered rebuke of her in the House of Commons because of her imperiousness and increasing disregard for collegiality proved scathing. It opened the door to even greater criticism and a challenge to her leadership.
With others smelling blood in the water and determined to challenge her, a confident Thatcher called a leadership race. Though she won the first ballot among parliamentary colleagues, Thatcher's numbers were reduced.
She returned home from a meeting in Europe to take soundings from her colleagues. Her meetings with various secretaries of state and Cabinet colleagues were brutal. Her support had collapsed. She was advised to go.
It is possible that Thatcher could have won a leadership battle, winning enough votes from backbenchers to remain as party leader. But with her senior colleagues, those who knew her best, advising her that she had lost their confidence and support, she felt duty-bound to leave.
The Conservative Party culture worked in removing a prime minister who had remained in office for too long. Her senior colleagues and the conventions of the party caused her to resign.
Britain nor The Bahamas or similar parliamentary democracies need rely on a term limit for the prime minister in order to remove party leaders or provide for succession.
In our system of Cabinet government we do not directly elect a prime minister as is the case of voting for a president in the United States. Voters elect a party from which the prime minister is chosen. Accordingly, there are rightly no set terms for a prime minister.

Flexibility
Those here at home who seek a term limit for the prime minister as a means of addressing the curtailing of an individual's time in that office have not addressed the main source and better response to this issue: a party culture and mechanisms to change leaders within political parties.
Our constitution already offers the flexibility and mechanism to check and limit political power. It is up to political parties to utilize these measures and to ensure greater democracy within a party.
The decision by former PLP Cabinet minister Alfred Sears, a proponent of a term limit for the prime minister, to seek the leadership of the PLP, is a welcome development.
If Sears can attain a decent result, even if he does not win, he will have shown himself to have what it takes to challenge Christie, setting himself up as a potential successor.
Sears has written about constitutional and government reform. If he desires a wider hearing in the country he must demonstrate that he is committed to reform within the PLP, a party allergic to reform and deeply committed to the status quo and the oligarchy it serves.
The British Conservatives have also demonstrated a high level of discipline at critical moments in British history. The party has shown a certain cohesiveness despite being riven internally by ideological differences such as the divide, sometimes gulf, between Eurosceptics and Europhiles.
Following the post-Brexit turmoil the party offered an object lesson in political damage control and quick repair, showcasing how a party's internal culture and structures are critical in times of crisis.
Having failed to achieve the Brexit result he desired, former Prime Minister David Cameron quickly offered to resign after an orderly process in which his party had appropriate time to elect a new leader. He did not act precipitously and impulsively and resign immediately.
Critically, Cameron did not resign because the Remain vote failed. Indeed, for the sake of the stability of the party and the country, most of his Cabinet wanted him to remain, as did prominent Leave campaigners.

Distinction
The distinction is critical: Cameron left because he did not want to be the prime minister who carried out the process of the UK exiting the European Union.
Those here in The Bahamas who called for Prime Minister Perry Christie to resign in the aftermath of two failed referendums on his watch, and who were quick to find a parallel between Cameron and Christie, appear not to understand the principle upon which Cameron resigned.
A prime minister does not necessarily have to resign simply because of a failed referendum. Neither Hubert Ingraham nor Perry Christie should have resigned after the failure of constitutional referendums on their watch, especially as the constitution mandates a referendum on specific changes in this foundational document.
What Christie should have resigned over is his failure to abide by the result of the gambling vote. The distinction is important.
In the aftermath of the Brexit vote the Tories were in turmoil. Cameron, who need not have called such a vote, and who had recently been elected with an outright majority, ended his political career with the UK set to leave the European Union, and with possibility of economic disaster and the dissolution of the union on the horizon.
Meanwhile, the Tories were ripping themselves apart with all manner of bloodletting and backstabbing, and Machiavellian machinations between Brexit rival camps and between rivals for party leader. The behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, much of which played out in the media, was often vicious and typically ruthless.
Yet, the party's spiral out of control was stemmed by its culture and the process for electing a new leader, which proved durable as the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn seemed bent on suicide and retaining a leader whose parliamentary colleagues were seeking a new direction for the party.
Tory grandees and rival leadership camps coalesced around Theresa May, who deftly appointed a Cabinet of rivals, with prominent Leave and Remain proponents now bound by the collective responsibility of Cabinet government.

Next week: More on the need for domestic political party reform and lessons for reform and change from other countries, including Great Britain.

o frontporchguardian@gmail.com, www.bahamapundit.com.

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