Op-ed: Prime minister arrangement in Trinidad and Tobago presents constitutional conundrum

At the Energy Conference last week, both Prime Minister Keith Rowley and Energy Minister Stuart Young made addresses that pointed towards a momentous shift in political power that should take place later this month or over the Carnival weekend if the timetable laid out by Dr Rowley last month is observed. The consensus of the PNM MPs has been secured by way of a signed and undated letter to the President indicating their agreed consensus for Young to become the next Prime Minister prior to the general election. The implementation of this consensus will depend upon presidential discretion, as the constitutional provisions will require her to form an opinion about who should become the Prime Minister. [ . . . ] The core issue here for the President is how she treats with the conundrum of a leader of a party with a majority who is no longer willing to serve as Prime Minister but is willing to continue to serve as the party leader of the party that “commands the support of the majority of members” of the House of Representatives. There is nothing to compel such a leader to resign as party leader. The question is that as President, unlike her predecessors, Noor Hassanali in 1995 and ANR Robinson in 2001, who appointed Prime Ministers under section 76(1)(b), she does not have the same factual backdrop to justify the appointment (Panday 1995—no party with a majority and Manning 2001—no party with a majority). The framers of the Constitution never envisaged that a party leader would not want to give up both offices (PM and party leader), but only one. They created a willingness to “accept” the office of Prime Minister as an additional condition for being appointed, but they never catered for the possibility of two different persons holding the offices of party leader and PM in cases where the party leader leads a party with a majority.
Read the full article here: Trinidad and Tobago Guardian