Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new Talk Radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Chatting with me this morning, the political leader of hope.
Good morning to you, sir.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Good morning. Good morning, Davy. Glad to be here.
Good welcome with all your listeners and Everybody on Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Yeah, everybody viewing right now on Facebook, social media, they can check us. They're seeing you nicely seated with me this morning.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Right.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Welcome to the program. I will start things off, but I must ask you first, though, looking at the humility with you this morning, how humbled you are being here this morning. How was it when you sat as acting President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago?
[00:00:43] Speaker A: That was a special experience as a Senate president.
One of the things we did, you know, which perhaps was unusual, myself and then speaker of the House Wade Mark, we invited the president, former President of the Senate and the former speaker to dinner and we had that sort of handover and camaraderie and passing the baton, as it were.
And I thought it was a great experience from that perspective.
Much of it required learning on your own what, what was the steps that you ought to take in that formal sort of sense. But it was an opportunity to serve.
It was an opportunity to learn and perhaps shift things to the extent that you can.
The new standing Orders of the Senate were introduced in my term. We did for the first time bring in a strategic direction for Parliament that came into in our place. I think I was the first time that the Parliament had that sort of strategic plan, a sort of five year window as you go forward. So we had some direction and we did get help from a number of international organizations to shape things. There was one particular thing that I didn't see to the very end that that is unfortunate.
I don't know if you ever looked at Parliament as to how they pass law, but if you just look on as a viewer, you will see that at one stage they get into what we call committee stage and you go through the bill word by word, section by section.
And that's the important part of it. That's, you know, where the rubber hits the road. That's where you create legislation.
I thought it was astonishing that you do it in the fashion we did it. So there was 30 senators, all maybe five or six were really interested in participating in that actual phase. And what I had recommended is that we need to really meet as a committee, a small committee, the people interested in it. And what one should have is a, you should have the, on a screen, the legislation in front of you. And as you Suggested changes. It should appear in red so you could consider it. When we stand up, can you imagine, can you picture yourself standing up in a room with 30 others and being told, look at section six, line four, I want to change this and put in XYZ, ABC or whatever.
You can't even picture the change that is being made. And that's how you create legislation in Trinidad and Tobago. That's ancient stuff.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: When much, much more modern. We went a long way to achieving what I wanted.
We just didn't make it. There is.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Has it been done?
[00:04:10] Speaker A: There is. It has me done another 10 years.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: We're still in our rhetoric.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Way of passing.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Absolutely amazing. It's, you know, like 18th century sort of stuff you're doing.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: But people ask me why I say we are not. In 1962. I saw you laughed when I made. When I made that mention a few moments ago, you looked at me and you smiled and I think you got what I was saying.
Now I ask you about that experience because to me and the wider populace, while we're getting into our conversation about a new era, a new era in Trinidad and Tobago and the reason why you all formed Hope, it's interesting with that name for the party Hope, why you all formed it. I wanted people to understand, and I always, like when I get guests like your learned self in studio to break down the science of parliament for us so we get a better sense of understanding who our elected poll appointees are and what their functions are. You said rubber hits the road. So you sat as Senate president.
That experience or that position is what exactly to the layman, what does the. For the layman that's listening to us to understand what is the Senate President? What is the Senate President?
[00:05:24] Speaker A: So for the. His perspective, the Lehman's perspective out there, you would be watching the debates on tv. That's what they see.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: That's what we see.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: And they will see that the Senate President conducts and keeps order within the House. And that's the basic role that they see. The important role is getting back to the committee stage.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: And that's where I felt, if you look back over it, perhaps I was the most of all selling presidents, you know, interface that you're in the middle.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Of, then you're down any trough.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I was down in the.
The trenches and I would say, look, this section could be improved by doing X, Y or Z. How about this? You know, I was much more of a, you know, I interfaced with what is going on merely just.
Yeah. I felt my views needed to be heard. And I, I agree at the end of the day the government determines what it is, but, and the opposition have an opportunity to be heard. And I said, why not the Senate president too? So I did, I did, you know, have my say so far as one can, you know, try to keep it within what I thought was appropriate.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Understood, understood. Now, going forward, fast forwarding from your tenure in office there, let's talk a little bit about hope and the reason for its creation and you know, the plans for the future with hope.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: All right, so as we did bow out of the election and I thought that was sensible, we were being realistic as it were, and the results would tend to uphold that. But we felt we brought something to the table that was new.
So in fact, for instance, Hope had 180 day plan, a six month plan for what we will do when we entered, if we enter this part of the government. We didn't expect to be the, the totality of government, but if you were participating in government, look, this is the plan we have and I haven't seen that for instance, come forward either for the PNM or the unc. What are our plans? You know, is it you just wake up day to day and say, well today we're going to do X or Y or do you have laid out for you? Look, I thought about this.
If you are to change and transform and see, set a direction for Trinidad and Tobago, what are we going to do? And of course what is on everybody mind, everybody's mind is crime. How are we going to deal with this crime? I did hear Mr. Sturgeon fairness to him. I thought he was on the button in terms of some, some of the recommendations he made relative to crime.
But you would have thought, I remember making a remark when you were being, when these, we're getting all these names of the various ministers, it would have been nice to have a three or four line bio for the public telling them what you know, what's the background of this, what do they bring to the table? I would have liked to have seen that. And we haven't seen it yet. And there's still early days yet. Perhaps we will have that remedied in due course. But it's good to know more about what you bring to the table.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Now when I look at politics over the years, one tends to see square pegs in wrong holes. So you kind of get people in positions as government ministers whose background is something totally different. You have a minister of finance who is an engineer.
So you know, I mean when they brought on Dan Paul. And the former Prime Minister brought in Dan Paul. He served as ambassador but he was also Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance. He has financial background so it made sense to put him in that position. You can't take a man who is good at works and infrastructure. When I say that I'm not talking about minister, but that's his, his training and drop him as the Attorney General. You would need a legal luminary, illegal, learned mind, somebody who's a practicing, who has paid their dues as we see come up with the last ag and put them in these positions. So I think omitting the bios and I sell you all of that to share this. I think omitting the bios is a strategic move on political entities in the country because of the upheaval that can follow. Why this man in this position, look at his background, what he know about this. Putting Minister Alexander in the position that he is holding now Minister of Homeland Security and Internal Affairs. I understand that.
I understand the rhetoric of splitting the Ministry of National Security into two. You know, they are allowed to focus on specific areas and they can get the job done rather than a broad scope and one minister to deal with everything.
So help me to appreciate that omitting the bios is not a strategic play.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: The constitution only says one thing, you know, that the Attorney General has to be a lawyer.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: That's it.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Other than that, you know, you have to be over a certain age really.
But there is, there is no, no criteria one would expect, as you mentioned, a Minister of finance would have some sort of economic or accounting background that would guide him.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: That he brings.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean brings to the table.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Even in agriculture, somebody with that kind of knowledge.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: You're with one person in those because they can understand their other ministry. Because I often say, when the talk did come up that we don't have a criteria as to who becomes Prime Minister.
We have had prime Ministers that were lawyers and with geological background.
So at the end of the day, is there a school you go to learn to become a Prime Minister?
[00:11:26] Speaker A: You know, that's a very good idea because that's one of the things that we have. It's been spinning around for 10 years. But we had policy based on party financing. And you might be a little surprised actually bring party finance into it. But in allows for members of the public, corporates and the government to create a fund, to contribute to a fund.
And our position has been that fund. One of the things that should be used for that fund is to create a chair of government in the, in the uwi, right. So that in fact you could have a school of government where people could learn the basics as opposed to coming into government and they just say, do whatever you come to your head or your mind.
Wouldn't that be a far, far better use of our funds? Listen, if in fact we had this school of government within UE or something akin to that, so we prepare, you know, how do you look at policy? How would you develop this?
So if you're going to spend your money, which is what is there in that draft bill, let's spend it wisely.
What the bill actually now says is we will give it to the politician to do what?
I'm going to spend my money, taxpayers money, to give it to a politician so she could get up on a platform and just bad mouth the person next to him. What do I as a citizen gather from that? As opposed to saying, you know, I want to send you to school and I want you to come, meaning government, chair of government, and learn something about the policies, practices, procedures so you are better trained so that when you step into government, you know at least something more. You won't know everything, but you have an idea, you have some idea.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: One of the things I think that is for persons that are planning into getting. Because we get that style, that sense of persons being pulled in or sucked into the political realm, not having active political backgrounds. And I use the Minister of Homeland in this example, Roger Alexander has a background in policing.
Not national security issues, but policing on a whole. And policing is people tell yourself, policing. He has a police background. The background of the office of Police Officers, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service are there. That entity, that body is there to uphold the law. That's it.
They rely on government to pass legislation. Whatever the government says becomes law after the President signs off on it. We are now passing this document over to you to enforce.
And that's all it is.
And I often say, not because you can play cricket. Brian Lara could play cricket really well, means he can captain the team.
The captaincy has to fall on someone who has leadership qualities.
A man who is a ace mechanic doesn't mean he could teach it. That's why we have a teacher, a teacher's college that we send. Teaching is a skill, it's an art. You have to learn it. So to take the minister, to take the guy. And I bring back the point to you, Mr. Hammond Smith, this morning to, to bring it back to that school in UE where we can train persons to become politicians and understand the basics of how legislation is formed, how the, the two thirds majority, what are these things, how these things function.
It's not easier. Mr. Timothy Hamilton Smith is so popular right now, he trending. Let's offer him some money. Come in, we're gonna have talks with you and use you bring you in and all of a sudden you campaigning and you going through, bam, you get through you inside.
Isn't that amazing with our political landscape.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: It is, and hence the reason why I say it. Some of the funding that is proposed should be in this arena so we know something more. I think your analogy to the fact that you know, because you're a mechanic doesn't mean you could teach this or that. I mean, I expect, for instance, in, in reference to Roger Alexander and I don't know the gentleman, I don't know what his background is. I know he was a police service. But one of the things that we are falling short of is the detection rate. No matter what we see.
You know, we want, we want, you know, hanging or whatever, but you don't get to hang in unless you, you detected somebody as having committed the crime. And to have 16% as your record is absolutely a.
So hopefully he knows something of the shortfalls as to why the police are not detected. What legislation has to be brought in, are we, you know, how far has DNA got? Is it just, you know, have you done your fingerprinting recently?
We had moved to have an electronic fingerprint and now we're back to putting, putting ink on our hands. And, you know, how do they maintain a database of fingerprints?
How do we keep a database of DNA? Is it being maintained?
Is that where the shortfall is? I don't know, but I suspect all of these things are falling short and the police don't have the equipment, the services, the technical skills in order to, to really get a hold of crime.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Mr. Mr. Hamill Smith, let's.
The, the Prime Minister, the outgoing prime, the former Prime Minister. Saying outgoing. The former Prime Minister.
Now, in this year we had three prime ministers. It was very difficult for those children in social studies.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: In 2025, three prime ministers.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: It's, it's laughable. It's funny.
It's an election year, so within an election year, we at least could get two. We could say we have two prime ministers covering one year. Because in that election year, if, if the rain switches hands, then a new installed, we had three. And the first one of the three, which is Dr. Rowley, gave a departing interview.
Would you. Do you think it was prudent enough of him to just invite three media personalities rather than a body and speak to them. What are your thoughts there?
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Well, I didn't know who he invited but obviously what you mean is he selected who he wanted there because his experience has taught him that some of these media houses or journalists are asking tough questions that I don't want to answer. I, I, that's what I would take away from that.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: Akash, Akash Zamaru is one of those heavyweights that, I mean some, some journalists may be a bit apprehensive in their approach. Akash Akzenia Bolfit. Akash Aziman. When I was in Tobago, your ministers called me, you know, I barely was on my way back to the room and I gained calls, there was some discontent and I looked at Dr. Robbins.
I mean we talking serious and I don't even think he answered the question, you know, and I mean when we look at Hope, you all decided to bow out and I am seeing Karen Nunez Cishara on your pages as well. I have a thing with recycled politicians, what I call recycled politicians, persons who, they just recycle themselves from one area to the next and it's just a bonks around and what have you. You all bowed out gracefully out of this election based on the analysis that you all would have done.
What is the future for Hope? We have another elections in five years. Are you all going to do homework, groundwork? Are you all coming back with 41 candidates? What is the future?
[00:19:36] Speaker A: All right, so one of the transitions that we're making in Hope is that we felt whether it's for this government or a future government or for the people, you know, we should create what we refer to as a think tank so that our website for Hope will transform into a think tank where we would put before the people the kind of policies, the kinds of questions you're now asking dealing with those issues that people want to know about and how we could improve, you know, and so that we will have this as something open to the public, accessible, whether you're in government or otherwise. In terms of what should we do? Everybody's saying of course, crime, yes, but the economy needs to diversify. Have we got any ideas of how we diversify or the reasons why politicians love energy? And I'm not discounting energy, we have to do the best we can in energy.
But what energy does is give you the funding that allows you to have, if you like, handouts and please people, what unfortunately unfortunate repercussion of that, which is what they refer to as, as the dark side of energy, as it were, is it? You, you don't allow people to grow and to become successful because it's in a challenging position, that they're resilient, that they seek success. Everybody wants to, to, to achieve whatever their potential is. But in fact you take away that desire to achieve your own potential because you know, every day I'm getting a fish, so why bother? And that is a disservice.
And that's a fallback that, you know, all economies around the world that have this sort of resource curse, as they call it, suffer from this. And the people in government need to be wary of that.
Just allowing that to just dominate the economy and not allow people to grow. And because life beyond energy, energy doesn't proportionately, it doesn't engage that many employees. It's a very small, it's, it's not labor intensive, it's money capital intensive.
But the number of people who are involved in the energy industry are, you know, quite small comparative to the rest of the nation.
And therefore we have to develop all our benefits, all our capabilities, all our competencies.
You know, is it that nobody else matters? We got money flowing, you know, that, that can't be how you develop a country.
The resource curse comes back to haunt you when you look at it that way. And you need, we need to diversify not just for the economy's sake, for the sake of people who want to succeed, who want to achieve their optimum, their full potential and not just rely and be support.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: So then let me ask you about outside of that, the omg, this thing just eluded my mind. Oh, Constitutional reform, you know, as it relates to, we have 26 seats in the Parliament on a legislative or a national level where constitution is necessary, they would need to get votes, more votes.
Should the government be looking at, should that be a conversation to be had again?
[00:23:40] Speaker A: We certainly think so. But you, you have 41 seats in parliament and I think what you were alluding to is that suggesting that to change the constitution you require a special.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Majority, which is about 27 seats.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: So there are two levels of special majority. Okay, one is at three quarter and the other is two thirds.
So that I think it's about 28 or 29 favorable votes you need to have for certain sections of it. But the remainder of the constitution can be changed, can be changed with a simple majority. There are many things, that's what people hear, constitutional change. And immediately they say, well we can't achieve this, we can't achieve this.
The very constitution commission that we recently had the most recent one made recommendations for constitutional change that are quite possible. There's nothing that says we can't change the preamble.
There's nothing that says we can't bring in right now we have rights and freedoms and you want to maintain those extremely important.
But from a country perspective, what about duties and responsibilities?
Is it. I'm just entitled to rely on the state to provide, you know, everything for me? We have duties and we should put that in the Constitution as a focus. You could do that by a simple majority.
And there are other things that we can do that are transformative in nature.
The electoral system, for instance, and you refer to 26 seats.
You look at the political parties, you look at the percentage of voters who came out, so it's 54%. The percentages has been decreasing.
Back to your 1962. Go and look and see what the participation was. I think it was over 70% into the 80s. I can't recall distinctly, but there was a high percentage of voting. That is because we hadn't yet set up a track record.
Now, of course, we have a track record in record. What many constituencies say is, my vote is not going to make a difference. It would just be a wasted vote.
And that happens regardless. Let's say I'm in a PNM stronghold constituency.
I might want to vote for pnm, but I say, why bother? We win already.
Is that the attitude in UNC strongholds? So the only places that matter are the marginal constituencies, the line or whatever. Yes, they might be expanding as we're finding out. We're finding out now, you know, but is that the only people who run the country or have a say in how the country is run?
Nine constituencies out of 41, you know, people are not. Because they feel their vote is wasted. And if you look back at 1981 or 1991 or 2007, where you find a party winning over 23% of the vote and getting no representation in Parliament and you're going to claim that's democracy. I think 23% of your electorate is a significant proportion who say, well, we don't, you know, it doesn't matter to us. So we either, you know, I think.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: I think it's the. It's the archaic Westminster system, that minister system that we operate under.
People keep talking about the snap election and they're saying it was a snap election. He had about four months in office still, that he could have done this and prepare and in my respected opinion, how much more you could have done in four months. That would have really swayed voter turnout.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Well, I thought, I mean, look, you know, looking on, I had seen what was happening.
I thought Dr. Rowley removing himself from the scene. I didn't know who he was going to put or that he was going to put anyone, you know, directly. But removing himself away, Hines got sidelined, frankly, elicited the, the Imbert got signed line. Those are the three people who, I think the public had the most, the greatest angst against.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Heinz Rowley, Rowley and Imbert.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Right, right. So when you remove them from the scene, or at least two of them, all of a sudden, to my mind, looking on, the tension sort of dropped.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: It kind of calm a little bit.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Because, you know, how do you, as an opposite, if you come in, into the election, the opposition comes in, usually you will attack whatever they lost. And the people you will attack, they not there is Mr. Hines and Mr.
Who now take their leave.
That strategically was a good move. I would have thought that whoever the incoming prime minister was would have wanted to set up his own track record to discount that. That was my inclination.
I had no idea how this new prime minister would have been established.
The political party has its way of doing that. Dr. Rowley sidelined that.
But that's a different issue I'm talking about. I would have thought the incoming person would have allowed themselves three or four months to show what they could do.
But I, I, the snap election was.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: Called, so I, I keep saying it was constitutionally bound this year and he had a time frame to work with. He could have taken it down to the wire or he call it and give him, give us six weeks out for it to happen, which is constitutionally bound as well. Duty bound. When you, when you ring that election bell, you have the opponents. Everybody must get six weeks. That's. Yeah.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: So what does that tell you? What it told me is they were still rumbling within the PNM hierarchy. That's what it told me. And Mr. Young decided, look, I'm not taking any chances here and find my support among the hierarchy dwindles.
I know if I call an election and I get voted every. No, every man, then you close ranks. Is that the nature of the thing? You close ranks and nobody, none of those who were perhaps opposing him. I mean, you had nine opposing him, remember that? Yeah.
11, four, nine against. That's a real reflection of what was going on in the Parliament. But silence, that's a code. That's a PNM way, particularly. And you close ranks. When you saw that he quoted election right away, I Thought there was more disarray among the hierarchy than was being publicly made.
That's what my takeaway.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: I also thought that, well, myself as a host, as a presenter, we paying attention to facts, the things happening. A lot of persons felt that it was a puppet and you were instructed to take office. And then once we do this, you are to do this next and let's see what happens and let's go to the polls. That's the sense people got on the ground.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: I didn't get that. I mean, that somebody was pulling the strings from behind.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: In the public's eye, we pass the battle on. And then because you were sworn in one day and 24 hours later, your.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: New ministers, your new agent, that was to close ranks. Well, it did, Doctor, Honestly, I think he wanted to get out of the politics.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: He needed to.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: He wanted to go on course, he wanted to relax and he was. He felt he had done his service and he had, I mean, for 10 years. It's not easy being a prime minister, I would imagine.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: I would imagine. But you were heading for that position at Hope.
You seem to want to be up, I think as a head is. It's a, it's a headache. It's. It's a lot. You are toting the entire country, nation on your back. I would never want to be the American president.
How do you all sleep when you have these? I just wonder how a lawyer have a life when they look at the briefs. I mean, you had to pay in turns, you had to bring in these people. But when you have to continuously be reading and paying attention, how do you all do it? You know, it's amazing. And then when you have legislation coming to Parliament, as a parliamentarian, as an opposition member, as a government senator, whatever it is, for you to make a valiant contribution because the country, the region, the world is looking on, paying attention to our politics. And when you have to make a valiant contribution to the Beta Bill, you have to be familiar with it. That's a lot of reading.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You have to do your homework.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: And the way the bill is written, it's written in such a language, archaic language, that, listen, man, we on the ground here watching this thing, and it's like, okay, I need to get Timothy Hamilton Smith to come into the room and explain this and help us to appreciate this.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: That's why one of the things we introduced, by the way, I don't know if, you know, the bills now come with an explanatory note.
This is what the bill says, but, you know, this is what it means.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: It actually means.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: That's what we actually. And it's quite easily to read the explanatory note, I think.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Let's take a call and see who's on the line with me this morning. Hello, good morning.
[00:33:35] Speaker C: Good morning, Davy.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Good morning, sir.
[00:33:38] Speaker C: And Good morning to Mr. Hamil Smith.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: Good morning, Davy.
[00:33:42] Speaker C: I met Mr. Hamilton Smith on July 27th. He graciously gave me his number and then he changed my name from Eric to Bill. I do not know why. Perhaps you explain later.
But let me just tell you something I want to raise. Yes, number one, both you and Mr. Hamil Smith are dead wrong. When you spoke about a snap election called by the Prime Minister, there has never been an instance where a political party launched all of its candidates and then wait until nine months down the road to have election.
That election was planned from day one by the leadership of the PNM for the date that it was 20th April. It is clear in my mind that that was planned. That was not like a slap as far as their mind is concerned. Because if you declare the candidates on the Sunday, you become Prime Minister on the Monday and you have a few days again because you already declared candidates. They're already in public atmosphere. Now secondly, Mr. Amel Smith, when you speak about constitutional reform, I want you and the rest of Trinidad and Tobago to understand something. You see in this convoluted in which we live, you see everything that people want in the constitution. You cannot get that when you go to the Parliament for constitutional reform.
My position is we should go to the Parliament and we should do one thing. We should change the structure of government. I want an executive president.
I want full time members of Parliament. I want a president who will have his own cabinet external to the parliament and choose them from anyone around the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
Now, the only quarrel I have with members on the other side is that they want something called proportional representation. And some of them want to do all kind of craziness about one man, one vote. I say take our lowest common denominator, which are our polling divisions, and from that you construct an electoral college. And the person who wins the most polling division become president. Now, lastly, I wanted to leave the foot you daving. You know, I was part of a team of people and we were marching to President's house and the person who was sitting there, well, standing there, was Mr. Hamil Smith. Because we had talk about the question of section 34. And when Mr. Hamilton Smith saw the crowd, I saw Mr. Hamilton Smith's face, although he was white. It turned white like a sheep. His entire clothes, everything I saw, he was totally soaked with cold sweat. And I wanted to tell you what that woman do. Have a nice morning.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: That's very good. Bill.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: What are your thoughts. Excuse me?
What are your thoughts on the executive president side of things and forming an electoral college?
[00:36:23] Speaker A: Yeah, so I, I frankly don't think that an executive president is the way we should go.
I, I much prefer so what. Despite the fact that he's saying, you know, talk about constitutional reform, but what he's really talking about, Eric, is really talking about his constitutional revolution. I mean, what he's proposed there is dramatically different from what exists now.
And when we talk about constitutional reform, it, it is trying to deal with the constitution, to treat with problems that exist in our society and how we could, how we could solve those. I don't think right now. Amazingly, people don't realize our Prime Minister, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, has more power than the President of the United States.
Now you, you think otherwise? Let me tell you how it works. All right?
First of all, the political leader of a party chooses the candidates no matter what they see.
Right. They have a veto power about who the candidate is if, if they see X candidate coming to the forehead. No, no, he not serving there or she not serving there.
And so the prime minister gets to choose really who. The candidates of the party. So ultimately, assuming they win, he has the whole of his colleagues hand picked and hand chosen.
And then from among those hand chosen people and from another set of hand chosen senators, he, the Prime Minister then chooses the people who he wants to be, to, to be ministers. So, all right, so he chose who went into parliament. He chose, went, who went into the Senate. He chooses, or she chooses the, the ministers. And then because our parliament is so small, the executive.
And I think that's what Eric is really referring to. The executive dominates the legislation, the legislature.
We really don't have the separation of powers that we need and we should have because the truth is the legislature just does whatever the prime minister says shall be done.
Nobody, in fact, we actually have a crossing of the floor act now in force. So if you decided to not follow the party line, you will boot it out of Parliament.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: Can you, when you put all those things together, I am saying to you, the prime minister has more power than the president. The president has no say but that who becomes the senators.
[00:39:33] Speaker B: But that is in Trinidad or that's the executive president.
That's because that's, that's in Trinidad.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Yeah. No, so an executive president. I'm talking about president. Oh, so the Prime Minister has no power at all.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Right, so the Prime Minister has more power than an executive president.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: Exactly. That's what I'm saying to you. Because if you look at the United States to give that as an example, the President of the United States can't determine what the legislature is going to do or Congress is going to do or the Senate will do because he had no say in the choosing of those people.
So really they have separation of powers. Now they may support the president, but very often, you know, in the United States you get people who don't support their party.
I mean, that's happened in the past in Trinidad. It's not that we have crossing the floor act, you know, support the party, get out. Yes.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: You're gonna, you're going to oust.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: Yeah, oust.
So the. I'm saying the Prime Minister has real control and we need. I, I don't agree with the cross the floor act. I don't think that's very anti democratic.
That that just leads to a sort of one man rule type of thing. And it's not really the spirit and intention of the Constitution.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: All right, let me take another call quickly. Thank you very much for explaining that before we depart.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Good morning.
[00:40:58] Speaker D: Morning. You see, the reason why I would say that I, I won't agree with that because the reason for that is that I could say the state of Bataria does not support the views of the Minister of Finance when he gets into office in Trinidad and Tobago, the views of the citizens when they get into the parliament are not taken into consideration.
So because of those reasons, why it would seem that you understand the point I'm making, because in our situation here, the prime minister to me doesn't really have. Because Trump presently now determines, if you observe, Trump has put together a group of people that he considered loyalists.
So I don't agree with Mr. Hamilton. And the next point, when you talk about being human beings, being creative, and I tell people, Mr. Hamil Smith, you know, what drives creation, innovation in our society, it might sound harsh, you know, and you pointed it out because of oil dollars. If our society did not have oil dollars, the citizen become innovative. You know, I could remember when we, when we encountered the coup, was it the coup or at one time they said no importation of fruits.
A group of people here or a person here, that is how we have different colored things on top of sweet bread. Decided I like to take our papaw, cut it into small pieces, make it into different colors and that is being sold presently now in our supermarkets because of lack of the state. Our economy was at that time a man find a way. So Mr. If we continue to have, as this administration outlined to the citizens, I'm going to give you this, I'm going to give you that, I'm going to take away taxes. If we continue to have a society of people promising people, we're not going to have an innovator. We can't get away from oil and gas. We can't diversify the economy because the people who are to do that keep choking under our minds that the state is supposed to provide us with this. Mr. Hamil Smith, that is our problem in our society. The people who are supposed to teach people just like all these. You're saying you are supposed to have a school to teach people to be politicians.
I guess we have to teach them to be how to put it, human beings of integrity first before politicians.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: All right, thank you. Thank you. Human beings of integrity.
Your final thoughts?
[00:43:41] Speaker A: Yeah, so he's right about the oil and gas. We're both on the same page so far as that's why they call it the resource curse, because most countries other than Norway, which is an outstanding example, recognize that, you know, money just flows through the country. What Norway did is they took the bulk of the money and they put it in a, a sovereign wealth fund. That's why their sovereign wealth fund is the biggest in the world. You know how many people Norway has 4 million people.
It's a large land territory, but it's, it's very much akin to Jamaica has 3 million. We are 1.5. We're not dissimilar in size.
What they did with the money was put it in a sovereign wealth fund for future generations to ensure that you have pensions after people stop working.
But you didn't take away that innovative spirit. That comes naturally because when people don't have, you know, you just have to get out there and do something in order to provide for yourself and that's when you become innovative. I want to see perfectly right on that.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: Unfortunately, we have to leave it there this morning. I want to say thank you very much for making time to come in and chat with us.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: Thank you for having me. Davy. The best insight, Instant feedback accountability. The all new Talk Radio Freedom 106.5.
