WHAT PASSES for the Constitution of Barbadosis not the exclusive preserve of any class of citizen for comprehension as a necessity for compliance with its provisions. It sets limits on authority to regulate fundamental freedoms assured.
When in this context, the Speaker of the House of Assembly and the Attorney General, even if only “obiter dicta”, are in agreement addressing an electoral constituency, on the paramountcy of the political party in the function of Parliament, and continue to confuse the adminstration of the Executive powers exercised by Cabinet with the Government which is actually the Legislature directing the administration, the electorate must express concern about this misdirection tantamount to heresy.
Nowhere in the Schedule of the Independence Order assumed as the Constitution, electoral law, or Standing Orders as rules of procedure in Parliament, is status accorded to political parties. What therefore has no substantial status cannot assume supremacy over the valid representation of a legal constituency without differentiation on grounds of political opinion as having respect for expression of the rights and freedoms of others established as law.
Elected members of Parliament are no more distinguishable as members of political party, than by colour, creed or gender, place of origin or race.
Every elected member of Parliament is responsible first and only to the constituency by which he/she was elected as their representative.
The elected member who is subsequently appointed as a Cabinet minister has a problem that induces the mental disorder of schizophrenia if he must respond positively to the expressed desires of his constituency, while at the same time preserving the interests of political opinions without the informed support of his constituency, not as a party machine, but a democracy.
The remedy for this form of corruption of democratic representation in Parliament is the separation of the adminstration of Executive power from the Legislature as effectively as the Judicature and the operative branch of the Public Service purports to be.
– LEONARD ST HILL