Making Parliament Work... (Excerpt From Reinventing T&T)

Above and beyond all of the failings of our current system of Government in my opinion is the hijacking of the people's representatives to serve as Government Ministers. To the consternation of the constituents, Parliamentary Representatives fail at their primary responsibility by engaging in employment and appointments outside of their elected position and this one thing, if changed, would have such a dramatic effect on so many of the ills of society in such a short space of time as to miraculously change this place for the better all at once.

From drainage and flooding to crime and punishment, education, employment and property values, the impact of full time Members of Parliament serving only their constituents and their constituents' needs will reinvent Trinidad & Tobago into a model nation almost immediately where a failing state currently stands.

How it would work:

Members of Parliament

By having a full time MP in office in his or her constituency at least three full days for the week will allow for (for example) the decentralization of the police administration by the creation of a precinct model throughout Trinidad & Tobago with an Assistant Commission assigned and in charge of each constituency working in collaboration with the MP on crime and security issues. It will also allow for the hands on dealing with social issues like drug addiction, unemployment and homelessness by creating sub committees to work in harmony with civil society and NGO's, and will allow for management skills to brought to bear on major issues like education, social development and culture through the creation of intra-constituency oversight Boards similar to the PTA model.

Within the short term one should be reasonably able to use success and failure statistics in all forty one constituencies to identify staffing needs, resource allocation, land value and other criteria, as well as identify those in national service who should be promoted higher within their respective fields and expose those who would do better re-assigned or relieved of responsibility overall.

It will also create an easier to manage elevation and promotion system based on success criteria over time similar to the private sector.

Ministerial Appointments

Where the current model of Ministerial appointment fails is the placing of too much responsibility focused in the hands of too few. Ministers should be professionals in their fields who have demonstrated a track record of success hired based on negotiations for set criteria and planned measurable targets over the period of the contract.

These Managerial Ministers would have authority over their forty one 'juniors' within each constituency and should be answerable to Parliament through the establishment of Parliamentary Oversight Committees. In this regard, the Commissioner of Police as well as the Minister of National Security (again as example) would both be answerable to the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on National Security, and this committee should be made up of members of both the majority and the minority in the House, paving the way for continuous debate on plans and proposals put forward during the budget. 

With this model both successes and failures would be very clear to see, and Governments would be empowered as the areas most in need of attention would be made clear by their overall statistics and numbers. This would also create an opportunity for the media to follow up on those in public service and their promises, further empowering the people at election time.

All through history we have learned that an empowered citizenry works in its own selfish best interest as most are driven to continuously pursue the improvement of their quality of their life. Make no mistake, where national development is concerned, that is a good thing. Far and away the greatest reward from adopting this model would be that the entire country would now be transformed into something similar to 'battling business units' with identified achievements and targets being the currency used to measure and reward success, with both the carrot and the stick  built in to all appointments and implied.

 As long as we remain bogged down by this notion of a Messiah, Savior or a Sheriff to 'fix things' we will continue to fail as governance at every level (especially in a democracy), ought to be a team sport. We need to understand that the sensible thing to do, the logical thing to do in the short term is to work with the current systems by making the systems work; one of the best ways of doing that is decentralizing authority and making all in service of the people answerable to the people.