Letter of the Day | Jamaica should move away from Westminster system

THE EDITOR, Sir:

Liz Truss has set a record for being the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party has got the dubious distinction of burning through multiple prime ministers and failing the British economy with BREXIT and other faulty policies, resulting in its economic collapse. In fact, the Indian economy is now larger than the British economy, despite the fact that India’s Human Development Index is not up to par, meaning that, if it were fully developed, it would eclipse the UK entirely. Must be karma for exploiting them through colonialism.

With this being the third or so prime minister who resigned from office from the Conservative Party without fully completing a term, it is showing that their talent pool is dwindling. This should echo out here, as we practise a Westminster parliamentary system, not a Congressional system like the US and other democracies, which can allow for multiple parties to provide their talent. It can be seen that the People’s National Party has its own crisis where Peter Phillips had to step down after losing the mandate of winning the 2020 elections after a leadership contest and, looking at Mark Golding’s prospects, if his party loses the local government elections, a coup d’etat may be in store for him.

Similarly, while Prime Minister Andrew Holness is trying to do what he can, there seems to be a mismatch in ministerial posts and his talent pool as MPs. He has Minister Fayval Williams at education when she’s better suited for finance, and Horace Chang, who seems more suited for working alongside Health Minister Christopher Tufton than being a minister of national security, a post I think should belong to a former superintendent or police commissioner or commander of the Jamaica Defence Force. But, this is because of limits on drawing the executive from the legislature, and not making legislative MPs and senators remain MPs while hiring technocrats for the executive ministerial posts.

Our system of dual-party democracy is not prone to damages of lack of voter participation, as that is a symptom of the real problem, the lack of talent. Should a party lose competent people and be forced to pick from that decreased pool of experts, then what that means is that the party would not only have a severe leadership crisis when it gets power, as there is a lack of viable prime ministers and cabinet members, but a severe legitimacy crisis, as political parties only live as long as they demonstrate that they are actually competent. Should a third and fourth party be able to achieve power, the legitimacy crisis would be more evident as the duopoly would be broken, and the parties would be subjected to free discourse instead of the sound of their own voices.

To save what’s left of our democracy, lest our country end up like the UK, where the Liberal Democrats might win and see a comfortable hold on power for a long time. Should we be a republic, we should also move to not only change the head of state’s title but to amend the Constitution so that we create a system where the executive and legislature are fully separated. The executive can select outside experts as ministers, instead of party insiders, and we recommend that the legislature is built in a Congressional system rather than the Westminster system, to allow competing parties to give the mainstream parties a reality check and an existential threat, lest they end up like the Conservative Party, which ruins Britain yet seemingly does not worry because, at some point they would be voted back in later, as everyone forgets about Liz Truss and Boris Johnson.

MARCUS WHITE