INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN POLITICS ON THE CARIBBEAN-

Westminster System, rule of law, electoral process, political life, migratory labour,
sports, and religion

THE WESTMINSTER SYSTEM

The Westminster system is a democratic parliamentary system of government modeled

after that of the United Kingdom system, as used in the Palace of Westminster (see
picture above), the location of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The system is a
series of procedures for operating a legislature. It is also used, or was once used, in most
Commonwealth and ex-Commonwealth nations, beginning with the Canadian provinces
in the mid-19th century. It is also used in former colonies of Britain in the West Indies
e.g. Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados….Important features of the Westminster
system include:

• A head of state who is the nominal or theoretical source of executive power, holds
numerous reserve powers, but in practice is a ceremonial figurehead. Such
examples include the British Sovereign or the President of India. A de facto
executive branch usually made up of members of the legislature with the senior
members of the executive in a Cabinet;
• Such members execute executive authority on behalf of the nominal or theoretical
executive authority. The presence of opposition parties;
• An elected legislature, or a system in which one of two houses is elected and the
other appointed; The ability of the lower house of parliament to, by default,

1
 dismiss a government by "withholding (or blocking) Supply" (rejecting a budget),
passing a no-confidence motion, or defeating a confidence motion. The
Westminster system enables a government to be defeated, or forced into a general
election, independently of a new government being chosen.
• The ability for a parliament to be dissolved and elections called at any time.

Politics of Trinidad and Tobago takes place in a framework of a unitary state, with a
parliamentary democracy modelled on that of the UK, from which it gained
independence in 1962. Under the 1976 republican Constitution, the British monarch was
replaced as head of state by a President chosen by an electoral college composed of the
members of the bicameral Parliament, consisting of the Senate and the House of
Representatives.

The country has remained a member of the Commonwealth, and has retained the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council in London as its highest court of appeal.

The general direction and control of the government rests with the Cabinet, led by a
Prime Minister. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are answerable (at least in theory) to the
House of Representatives. The 36 members of the House are elected to terms of at least 5
years. Elections may be called earlier by the president at the request of the prime minister
or after a vote of no confidence in the House of Representatives. In 1976, the voting age
was reduced from 21 to 18. The Senate's 31 members are appointed by the President: 16
on the advice of the prime minister, six on the advice of the leader of the opposition, and
nine independents selected by the President from among outstanding members of the
community. Local government is through nine Regional Corporations and five

2
municipalities. In 2005 Parliament approved a proposal by the independent Elections and
Boundaries Commission to increase the number of seats in the House of Representatives
from 36 to 41.
The President is elected by an electoral college, which consists of the members of the
Senate and House of Representatives, for a five-year term. The Prime Minister is
appointed by the President from among the members of Parliament; following legislative
elections, the person with the most support among the elected members of the House of
Representatives is usually appointed Prime Minister. The cabinet appointed from among
the Members of Parliament which constitutes elected Members of the House of
Representatives and appointed Members of the Senate

Politics of Jamaica takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative

democratic monarchy. The 1962 Constitution established a parliamentary system based
on the United Kingdom model. As chief of state, Queen Elizabeth II appoints a governor
general, on the advice of the prime minister, as her representative in Jamaica. The
governor general's role is largely ceremonial. Executive power is vested in the cabinet,
led by the Prime Minister. Jamaica is an independent country and Commonwealth Realm.
It is a parliamentary democracy whose political and legal traditions closely follow those
of the United Kingdom. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative
power is vested in both the government and parliament. Jamaica's current Constitution
was drafted in 1962 by a bipartisan joint committee of the Jamaican legislature. It came
into force with the Jamaica Independence Act, 1962 of the United Kingdom Parliament,
which gave Jamaica political independence. Constitutional safeguards include freedom of
speech, press, worship, movement, and association. The Judiciary is independent of the
executive and the legislature. Jurisprudence is based on English common law.

3
BOX:1 An Analysis of the Westminster System in the Caribbean
Diana Mahabir-Wyatt (former Independent Senator of Trinidad & Tobago)

While I appreciate the stability the system has given us in the past, I
do not think
the Westminster system , even in the many variants in which it
appears in the
Caribbean, is still appropriate for small Caribbean states at this
juncture in history, for a
number of reasons. The first and most obvious is size. Our countries
are too small to
provide large enough parliaments to make the system work. There are
no backbenchers
to provide creative disagreement in parties, there are not enough
parliamentarians to
make the Parliamentary committee system workable, and the size of
the potential
parliamentary representative pool it leads us to chose from is
inadequate, and does not
include the intellectual and skills resources that we need.

What we end up with under the present system is an inefficient

parliament, simply
because by and large whatever one party proposes, the other party
opposes. If the
proposer is the majority party, the measure goes through. If it is not, it
doesn’t. The
major motivating factor is not what is in the best interest of the
country, but what is in
the party interest. We have an elected dictatorship.

4
As in the UK, the members are told how to vote in the party caucus
that takes place
before Parliament meets, and the only freedom they have is how to
say what they are
told to argue. In the Senate in T&T, they don’t even get that choice.
Except in rare cases
for people whose power is not questioned, both government and
opposition senators
were asked to submit written copies of what they were going to say
before they spoke,
and they could only speak with the consent of the party leader in the
House. This gives
rise to a blurring of the distinction between the executive and the
legislature, with the
exception of the strength of the Independents in the Senate, who, by
and large are
listened to by both sides, and whose amendments to legislation are
frequently accepted,
either behind the chair, or on the floor in committee. In my experience,
Opposition
Members seldom move amendments, even though they will argue
against a specific
provision in a given bill.

A FURTHER CRITIQUE OF THE WESTMINSTER SYSTEM

The OAS Unit for the Promotion of Democracy (UPD), in coordination with the UNDP,
organized a conference on “Constitutional Reform in the Caribbean.” Held in Barbados
from January 20 to 22, 2002.

5
A number of participants believed that the full weight of authoritarian traditions and the
degree to which colonial legacies continue to undermine governance in the region needed
to be acknowledged before any type of reform could be considered. In the view of Lloyd
Best, Director of the Trinidad Institute of the West Indies and Publisher of the Trinidad
and Tobago Review, the post-independence systems had in large part recreated the
colonial structure of central domination by a single, governor-type figure, namely, the
Prime Minister. In Trinidad and Tobago, he said, “What we’ve inherited is a West Indian
system run by people with a Westminster connection, but at every stage…essentially
designed, sometimes unwittingly, for the control of popular participation.” Sheilah
Solomon said that Caribbean societies were the only ones in the world originally created
to institutionalize inequality, and that after five hundred years many of the structures and
attitudes remained in place.

The excessive authority and overwhelming power constitutionally granted to the prime
minister, to the extent that, in the words of Prime Minister Gonsalves, “parliamentary
government is reduced not merely to cabinet government but to prime ministerial
government.” Prime Minister Gonsalves underlined the executive’s virtually
untrammelled authority with regard to government appointments—from the cabinet down
through the public service—and the dissolution of parliament, saying that “all roads lead
to the prime minister.”

6
ELECTORAL PROCESSES

Adapted from: http://www.parliament.uk/works/elections.cfm

General elections are held in the UK as well as former English colonies of the Caribbean
at least every five years. However not all Parliaments run for the whole five years, and a
general election may be held before this period is up. In the event of a government having
a small majority the election may well take place much earlier.

In between general elections, by-elections are held as necessary to elect a new Member
of Parliament to an individual constituency.

General elections are elections of the whole House of Commons at one time: one
Member of Parliament for each constituency in the United Kingdom. Each MP is elected
from the various candidates by a simple majority system in which each elector can cast
one vote. The candidates may be from one of the three major political parties, from a
minor party or from any other organisation that has been registered with the Electoral
Commission. If a candidate does not represent a registered party or group s/he may stand
as an 'Independent'.

Elections in the Commonwealth Caribbean:

The Electoral Experience of Jamaica and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago

Elections as a political process serve as the single most important mechanism for citizens
to participate in the selection of a government. When conducted to international
standards, elections tend to confer legitimacy on a government. In the Commonwealth
Caribbean, the electoral experience varies and tends to reflect not only the socio-political
culture of the member state but also its particular electoral system.

7
The most distinctive feature of elections in the Commonwealth Caribbean is the use of
the Westminster style of parliamentary democracy, where the legislative function of the
state is vested in an elected assembly. Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica are
Commonwealth members that gained independence from Great Britain in 1962. Both
countries have a bicameral parliament and a prime minister. Trinidad and Tobago
declared itself a republic in 1976 and has a president elected by the Parliament in place of
a governor general.

In Jamaica the governor general is the official representative of the British monarch.
Both states use a first-past-the-post election system, which requires electors to vote for
one candidate only. The candidate with the most votes is declared the winner, and the
party securing the highest number of seats forms the government. This type of election
system is normally credited for its simplicity in terms of administration as well as the
speed that it allows in vote tabulation and the dissemination of election results. On the
other hand, the system is criticized for not operating well in a multiparty environment and
for tending to exclude small political parties that often fail to achieve any significant
electoral gains in terms of winning seats. It is also criticized for favoring the development
of political parties and policy platforms based on clan, ethnicity or region.

THE RULE OF LAW

The rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only
in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance
with established procedure. The principle is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary
governance. [source: wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law]

In Commonwealth law, the most famous exposition of the concept of rule of law was laid
down by Albert Venn Dicey in his Law of the Constitution.

8
"The rule of law is a political principle the classic exposition of which is in Dicey Law of
the Constitution (10th Edn, 1959) p 187 et seq. Dicey identified three principles which
together establish the rule of law: (1) the absolute supremacy or predominance of regular
law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power; (2) equality before the law or the
equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of the land administered by the
ordinary courts; and (3) the law of the constitution is a consequence of the rights of
individuals as defined and enforced by the courts."

Another definition of the rule of law can be found in - Halsbury's Laws of England, Vol:
Constitutional Law and Human Rights, paragraph 6, footnote 1 –

“... every official, from the Prime Minister down to a constable or a collector of taxes, is
under the same responsibility for every act done without legal justification as any other
citizen. The Reports abound with cases in which officials have been brought before the
courts, and made, in their personal capacity, liable to punishment, or to the payment of
damages, for acts done in their official character but in excess of their lawful authority.
[Appointed government officials and politicians, alike] ... and all subordinates, though
carrying out the commands of their official superiors, are as responsible for any act which
the law does not authorise as is any private and unofficial person.”

9
MIGRATORY LABOUR.

Diaspora, Migration and Development in the Caribbean

Keith Nurse
http://www.focal.ca/pdf/migration_caribbean.pdf

Migration is one of the defining features of the modern Caribbean since colonization,
slavery and indentureship. In the last fifty years the Caribbean has shifted from being a
net importer of labour to become a net exporter. The Caribbean has one of the largest
diasporic communities in the world, in proportion to population (Stalker 2003). For
example, it is estimated that the Cubans and Dominicans in the USA are equivalent to 8%
of their respective populations of origin (UNECLAC 2002: 237). And, in some of the
ministates in the region like St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, and Belize, annual labour
migration accounts for as much as 12% of their population, thereby transferring
their population growth (Mittelman 2000: 60).

The debate on the value and significance of labour migration and diasporic economic
relations to the Caribbean has been articulated since the late 1960s. There were several
studies that examined the benefits to the Caribbean from the establishment of
transnational communities (Friedlander 1965; Frucht 1968; Henderson 1970; Palmer
1974; Philpott 1973; UNITAR 1970). The findings from these studies on balance were
quite critical of the developmental efficacy of emigration. In short, the studies point to the
loss of economically active workers, especially the highly educated on account of the
brain drain and question whether migration and remittances go beyond securing an
improved standard of living for some migrants, their families and local communities
to contribute to national and regional development.

10
The issue of migration and development has resurfaced since the late 1990s with the
rapid growth in workers remittances, the proliferation of trans-national networks, the
erosion of nation-state sovereignty and the emergence of trans-national communities and
hybrid cultural identities (Addy 2002; Castles 2000; Duany 2002)

THE STATISTICS – The receiving countries

The top labour-exporting countries from the Caribbean are Cuba, the Dominican
Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Guyana. Other major sending countries are non-independent
territories like Puerto Rico, the French Overseas Departments, and the Netherlands
Antilles. The international migration of Caribbean people is largely to North America
(the US and Canada) and former colonizer countries in Europe. The US is the
number one destination by a significant margin, and is estimated to account for as much
as 75% of the Caribbean-born and first generation diaspora (Segal1996). The next largest
receiving countries are the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, and France (see table 1).
Estimates from Table 1 put the size of the Caribbean diaspora in the mid-1990s at 6
million (not including undocumented migrants).

THE HISTORY & IMPACT

Caribbean emigration occurred in two waves. The first wave occurred during the post
World War II boom in the Western economies in the 1950s and 1960s on account of pull
factors like full employment and labour shortages in unskilled and semiskilled jobs. The
second wave took place in the late 1970s and 1990s as a result of global economic
restructuring and economic and social decline in Caribbean countries.

Caribbean emigration also had a strong pull factor in the increased demand for service
workers and professionals (e.g. domestics, teachers, nurses, doctors) in the North Atlantic
countries. There have also been political reasons for Caribbean migration as exemplified
by the case of the Cuban Mariel boatlift in 1980 and the “rafters crisis” of 1994 as well as
the Haitian exodus on account of political turmoil at home (IOM2000).

11
DIRECT IMPACT: Remittances & consumption patterns

The growth of the diasporic economy has made a substantial contribution to a more
favourable balance of payments position in several labour exporting territories in the
Caribbean. The largest recipients were the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba and
Haiti. In international perspective, Jamaica and Dominican Republic are in the top five
remittances recipients in per capita terms. It is estimated that approximately US$5.7
billion in remittances were sent to the Caribbean in 2002 (see table 5). Remittances
have emerged to be the fastest growing and most stable source of capital flow and foreign
exchange in the last decade

Remittances are a major source of income for many lower-income households around the
region (Itzigsohn 1995). In the case of Jamaica it is reported, “in some rural areas,40%
of households derive significant financial support from relatives working abroad or in one
of the major cities” (World Bank 2003: 45). In many respects, remittances are filling the
gaps that the state and development agencies have been unable to plug.

On the other hand, it is observed that remittances and other transfers of goods increase
external dependency, promote Western consumption styles and cause inflationary
pressures. After expenditures on food, education and housing there often is not
enough to be invested in productive assets although it is observed that remittances are
being used to fund some small business investments (Chevannes & Ricketts 1997).

Importantly, rather than stemming the tide of migrants, remittances tends to encourage
the outflow of new migrants. This relates to the deepening culture of emigration that acts
as a disincentive to home investment and human capital formation. The problem also
relates to the structure of accumulation in the sending societies. The problem is
that traditionally the injection of foreign capital has had low levels of retention and is
therefore unlikely to generate new business and employment in the sending societies.

12
MIGRATION & LABOUR: Brain Drain verse Brain Gain

Migration can ease pressure on labour markets, and reduce unemployment, poverty and
social inequality if it is surplus labour that is exported. It is also suggested that return
migrants are an important source of skills, expertise and ideas (i.e. brain gain, circulation
or exchange) to be drawn on for national and regional development. The problem for the
Caribbean is that it is not surplus or under-employed labour that is the main group of
migrants. Instead, it is the highly skilled and educated. The evidence for brain gain is
limited relative to the outflow.

The well educated and skilled are the most mobile group of migrants because they are in
high demand in OECD countries, but also because they can afford to migrate. The cost of
migration is less of a factor for those countries that are in close proximity to labour
importing countries.

It can be argued that the departure of highly skilled migrants reduces productivity in
specific sectors of the economy and creates labour gaps even in a context of high
unemployment. This is exemplified by the loss of human resources that are not easily
replaced, as is the case with the migration of teachers and medical professionals from the
Caribbean.

The problem is more acute due to the wider income gap between the sending and the
receiving countries. This is because the sending societies are becoming increasingly
uncompetitive in the global labour market for these skills. The exodus of valuable
professional skills compromises broader development goals. For example, many
government and development agencies find it difficult to recruit local Professionals
because the 'best and the brightest' have migrated. Ultimately, these agencies have to
resort to employing expatriates from a lower wage territory. For example, Cuban and
African doctors and Cuban nurses are filling the labour shortage of medical professionals
in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. Cuba has a labour surplus in the medical field but
countries in Africa have lower doctor/patient ratios than the Caribbean.

13
MIGRATION ANALYSIS: Good or Bad?

These observations reinforce the argument that remittances are only one element of the
diasporic economy and it raises the question whether remittances alone can outweigh the
loss of investment in human resource development and the replacement and opportunity
cost undertaken by labour exporting countries.

DEPORTATION AND SECURITY: A real test for the Justice System & Rule of
Law

Contemporary migration has generated a new context of international security for the
Americas. One issue that has become of utmost importance to the Caribbean is the
deportation of criminals who are non-American nationals. The introduction of
anti-crime and anti-terrorism policies in the 1990s is part of a more aggressive
criminal deportation policy to reduce crime and lower the US taxpayer's burden
in terms of incarceration. Large shares of the criminals removed from the US have
been deported to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. In 1999 and 2000,
21,000 or two-thirds of the violent criminal illegal aliens that were removed
were Mexicans.

The Caribbean saw a total of 34,411 persons, 71% of whom had committed criminal
offences, deported from the US between 1993 and 1999. The Dominican Republic, Haiti
and Jamaica were the main source countries for the deportees (Griffin 2002: 73).
Criminals have also been deported from Canada. In 1999, Canada deported
approximately 1,100 people on criminal grounds, most of who were returned to the
Caribbean.

The impact of the Canadian and US deportation policies on the Caribbean is claimed by
governments to be among the main causes for the increased incidence of violent crime. It
is often argued that the deportees are introducing new skills and trans-national networks
into the region that contribute to drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping and

14
immigrant smuggling. Caribbean governments have also expressed grave concern that the
repatriation of criminals has occurred without proper notification and identification of
deportees and there are no support mechanisms to reintroduce them into Caribbean
society. Caribbean governments also point out that many of the deportees have lived in
the US and Canada for so long that they have no family members and social networks in
the countries that they have been repatriated to.

However, based on the crime data from Belize, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago,
Griffin concludes that the data is either inconclusive or there is no statistical significant
relationship between criminal deportation and the increase incrime in these territories.He
also hastens to add that this “does not mean that there is not a substantive relationship”
(2002: 73-74).

SPORTS – U.K. (CRICKET, SOCCER) & USA (BASKET BALL, TRACK & FIELD)

Cricket

Cricket in the Caribbean is unique as a sport because it has a West Indian team, rather
than teams from various Caribbean islands. However, this is less surprising when one
considers the background of the game, which is largely based on social hierarchy.

Teams are divided into Players and Gentlemen, and the Gentlemen are the leaders of the
team. The social structure of the British colonies went a long way toward making it easy
to define these teams along racial lines.

As children grow up immersed in this popular game, cricket is played in the streets. Some
of cricket's most famous champions have been from these West Indies teams.
Furthermore, the game has served for an outlet against racial issues through more recent
years.

15
Though many other sports have been popular throughout the Caribbean, these four truly
transcend national barriers. They've become popular with many islanders regardless of
the race, income, or even language of the players.

The game of cricket has a known history spanning from the 16th century to the present
day, with international matches played since 1844, although the official history of
international Test cricket began in 1877. During this time, the game developed from its
origins in England into a game which is now played professionally in most of the
Commonwealth of Nations

Football

The history of association football can be traced back into ancient times, but the modern
game has its roots firmly in the traditional football games played at the public schools of
England. By the mid-19th century, the enthusiasm that some former public school pupils
still had for the games of their youth led to them forming amateur football clubs, each
playing to the rules of a particular school. When teams from different traditions played
each other there were often disputes about exactly how the game should be played. In
1863 some of the English clubs met at the Freemason's Tavern, London to form the The
Football Association (FA) with the aim of creating a universal set of rules that would
allow clubs to play each other without dispute. The impact of the FA was not immediate
as football was still very much an amateur activity. The first professional clubs were
formed once the working classes took up the sport, and businessmen saw an opportunity
to make money from spectators coming to see star players. Once professionalism took
hold the popularity of the game became immense and was soon spread throughout the
world by British expatriates/Colonalists.

16
Track & Field

Modern athletic events are usually organized around a 400 metre running track, on which
most of the running events take place. Field events (vaulting, jumping, and throwing)
often take place in the field in the centre of the running track.

Many athletic events have an ancient origin and were already conducted in competitive
form by the ancient Greeks. Athletics was included in the first modern Olympic Games in
1896 and has been part of the program ever since, providing the backbone of the
Olympics. Women were not allowed to participate in track and field events in the
Olympics until 1928. An international governing body, the IAAF was founded in 1912.
The IAAF established separate outdoor World Championships in 1983. Other major
events include the World Indoor Championships and the European Championships. The
sport has a very high profile during major championships, especially the Olympics, but
otherwise ranks well down the list of sports by public interest in almost all countries. The
leading regular circuit of events takes place in Europe each summer, and includes the
Golden League events.

The diffusion of track & field into a west Indian/Caribbean mainstream sport was in part
mainly due to the mass media disseminating information of the success of USA athletes
at various Olympics and World Championships.

Basketball

Dr. James Naismith is known world-wide as the inventor of basketball. He was born in
1861 in Ramsay township, near Almonte, Ontario, Canada.

Naismith watched his sport, basketball, introduced in many nations by the YMCA
movement as early as 1893. Basketball was introduced at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
Today basketball has grown to become one of the world's most popular sports.

17
In 1946, the National Basketball Association was formed, organizing the top professional
teams and leading to greater popularity of the professional game which was closely
followed in the Caribbean via media transmissions.

RELIGION

Religion in the Caribbean is linked to the external influences of colonisation, immigration

and indentureship as well as the efforts of the missionaries to covert Amerindians,
African slaves and Indentured labours to Christianity. The larger territories of the
English speaking Caribbean have a greater mix ranging from traditional Catholicism to
conventional Christians intermix with the Asian backed Hinduism and Islam as seen in
Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana.

In the Leeward Islands and Jamaica the contemporary period presents religious
affiliations moving towards North American denominations of Pentecostals and
Evangelists.

In the Caribbean the concept of syncretism or the merging of different systems or beliefs
have been used to describe the blending of beliefs system that were previously suppress
(e.g. African religious practices) with European and American religious denominations.

18