By: Staff Writer
January 14, 2025
The United Nations Development Programme, in conjunction with International IDEA in Sweden, released a new report on constitutional government in the Commonwealth Caribbean, which says that constitutional change falls short due to government’s needing a super-majority in parliament and also referenda.
The report said that the “difficulties—and hence the challenges for would-be reformers in the region—lie partly in the procedural obstacles that would need to be overcome, especially in those countries where constitutional change needs not only a super-majority in Parliament, but also approval in a referendum.
“The political dynamics of constitutional change are an even greater obstacle: in countries with two-party politics and dominant executives, many structural reforms would either limit the power of the winning party, or open up the field to other voices, currently under-represented. Those in power under existing rules will invariably be sceptical of such changes, unless they have no option but to accept them. So far, the generally adequate functioning of institutions in the region has meant that a crisis, capable of moving powerful actors to accept such reforms, had not emerged.”
All Commonwealth Caribbean countries follow the Westminster system of governance and are tied to the constitutional constraints that come with it.
The rigidity of the Westminster system allows for stability, but like the report discusses, it is not progressive enough when there are fundamental societal change that is needed.
The report added: “At the same time, intense political competition between the two dominant parties, and a tradition of winner-takes-all politics, makes the sort of cooperative approach needed to bring about constitutional change very difficult to achieve.”
The Commonwealth Caribbean is a region consisting of 12 independent countries (Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago) and 6 British Overseas Territories (Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and Turks and Caicos Islands).
The Bridgetown Conference on Constitutional Change in the Commonwealth Caribbean, on which this report is based, focused exclusively on the independent countries, and not the British Overseas Territories.
The report also said: “The Commonwealth Caribbean countries have not experienced many major constitutional crises of the sort that leads to coups, insurrections and foreign intervention. With the partial exceptions of Grenada and Guyana, all the independent countries of the Commonwealth have maintained an unbroken record of formal democracy since independence. Competitive elections have been held with constitutional regularity.
“The basic civil liberties essential to a democratic system have, for the most part, been maintained; opposition parties have been able to organize and campaign without direct oppression.
“Crucially, defeated Governments, on losing elections, have peacefully left office. These countries have therefore been spared the authoritarianism, state failure, chaos, bloodshed and catastrophic misgovernance that has afflicted many former British colonies elsewhere.”