I would not hesitate to grade the Electoral
Boundaries report highly in some aspects. Given previous precedents, we may even be tempted to classify
it as a work of excellence relative to its substance, “methodology”, transparency, quality
and clarity. If we extricate the “naked politicking”, then we might even want to claim that there seems hitherto to be a measure of national consensus that the commission did an excellent job.
The seemingly only credible “frontal attack” was initially
piloted by Hon Richard Frederick during the House debate; however, the brunt
and focus of that attack were directed at issues related to implementation
logistics and not the “substance” of the report.
Richard’s argument was essentially two-dimensional: the first dimension focused on constitutional issues; and the second was
related to cost implications.
Firstly, he contended that while, according to the
constitution, it was a constitutional requirement to commission the
review of constituency boundaries, it was not a necessarily a constitutional
requirement to implement the recommendations of the Commission.
The Prime Minister in his rebuttal countered with the argument that if we
didn’t review the boundaries, then we were setting ourselves for potential "judicial
action" by anyone who chose to pursue it.
Apparently, there seemed to be a “measure of asymmetry”
between the positions of the two legal minds. Richard was drawing a line of
demarcation between the constitutional requirement of (a) the "review" and (b) the "implementation" of its findings. Kenny on the hand seemed
to have conflated (a) and (b) and therefore spoke of one in the context of the other, suggesting that the two were an inseparable whole. Perhaps, there may well be legal nuances which may require further elucidation for the laymen like you and me.
Richard’s second argument was the issue of
affordability. Kenny countered that it was a constitutional requirement and that
the implementation cost ($300,000) approached zero when compared to the humongous ($500,000,000)
public service wage bill.
Indeed, Richard’s arguments against the bill were the only
ones that had merit and logic; and might even have provided dissenters and
detractors with a framework for generating ideas for mounting a propaganda campaign,
not a legal challenge, against the bill.
The paradox however is: Richard’s frontal
arguments in my view were still largely extraneous and tangential to the
heuristic content of the report and hence they did not constitute a
“refutation”. Perhaps, that was exactly what he sought out to do.
Apart from the characteristically incoherent
and idiosyncratic diatribe of Hon Guy Joseph which in my view had absolutely no
heuristic relevance to the debate, hardly any parliamentarian had anything “substantially
negative” to say about the bill. Similarly, criticisms or challenges to the
bill outside of the House fell outside of the realm of the genuine “heuristic
analysis”, save for the contribution of Ambassador Earl Huntley which only added
extra corroborative content to debate.
The logical question therefore is: Why is the
substance of the report on constituency’s boundaries “irrefutable” or
“unrefuted” so far?
One answer is perhaps, given its heavy dose of
facts and figures, it may have been too conceptually complex or intellectually challenging to assimilate! It
could also be that none of the critics might have taken time to study it.
In that regard, our press/media stand for
identification. They have not provided a structured review of it; but instead focused
on the peripheral “roro” and "out-goes-in" treatment which has plagued the debate. Indeed, up to now, I have not heard or
read a conventional critique on the substance of the report. What has made the
headlines has been the extraneous foolishness uttered by largely political
charlatans. Except for RSL's Shelton Daniel's who held a constructive discussion with Ambassador
Huntley, all we’ve heard have been pontifications and political diatribe.
In part II of this article, I will therefore do a largely “academic” analysis of the report. I will attempt to show that the report does have flaws and it is by no means impenetrable. STAY TUNED!
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