Advice, anyone?

For students of politics, the case of the missing members of parliament, makes for an interesting political case study. The case is difficult in that it leads onto unfamiliar, untested terrain and would present an intriguing final examination problem which would probably read as follows:

“You are a political advisor to the prime minister. Your party has just concluded a highly successful National Convention after almost three years of bad press and political crises. The Opposition has suddenly stopped talking about a landslide victory and more guardedly in terms of targeting winnable seats. Two MPs did not attend the Convention. They have twice been fired from Cabinet and are viewed by many within the party with mistrust and suspicion. Party hardliners argue that at the last minute they will abandon the party and urge for a pre-emptive strike. But their seats are winnable in a general election that will be very close. Your advice to the Prime Minister could cost your party the next general election. Advise.”

With complex issues, it is best to return to first principles. The purpose of a political party is to win elections – as many as possible. Everything else is subjected to the paramountcy of winning. The most potent threat to the objective of winning must then be identified within the subject matter of the problem. The most potent threat is the possibility of the honourable gentlemen abandoning the party and running independent.

Double jeopardy

The 2001 amendments to the Belize Constitution provide that a member of the House of Representatives shall vacate his seat if he resigns from his political party or crosses the floor. It is a safe assumption that both representatives – like all others, in fact – must have the winning of their seats as their first and central objective. With voter needs and expectations at an all time high, it helps if constituents are able to benefit from government programs and projects. Resigning or crossing the floor would create a political double jeopardy by removing the representatives’ supporters from the ambit of government projects and, secondly, causing them to face two elections, a by-election and then the general election. It is therefore very unlikely that either representative, being successful and competent politicians, would resign from the party or cross the floor.

When is the floor crossed?

But when is the floor crossed? The natural and ordinary meaning would suggest that a representative crosses the floor (of parliament) if he leaves his party and joins the Opposition. But what happens if the representatives leave their party, do not join the Opposition, but rather offer themselves as independent candidates. Not having joined any other party in the House of Representatives or elsewhere, can they be said to have crossed the floor at all? This situation arose in Zambia in 1994 in the case of the Attorney General v Kasonde. The provisions in the Zambian Constitution were somewhat similar to Belize’s in that their Constitution was silent as to what happens when a representative leaves his party but joins no other and remains independent. The Supreme Court of Zambia said:

“The article is in total silence as to what happens to a member who resigns from the party that sponsored his candidature and does not join another party. That situation is not expressly covered. There can be no doubt that there is a lacuna or void in this article.”

The Court concluded that it would be discriminatory if a representative who left his party and joined another had to vacate his seat but one who left his party and became independent didn’t have to vacate his seat. The Court therefore read words into the Constitution to make the article equally applicable to representatives who left their party but remained independent. The option, therefore, of leaving the party and remaining independent would not, at this time, be a tenable option for the two representatives in this case study.

Crisscrossing the floor

One way of getting around the anti-defection provisions of the Belize Constitution –perhaps the only way – is to wait until the House of Representatives is dissolved and then declare independent candidacy. At this juncture all seats in the National Assembly are vacated so that the question of sanctions for resigning or crossing the floor cannot arise. The party would be critically exposed in having to find and launch two new candidates to win, all in the space of thirty days. All things considered, this would be an overwhelming challenge.

In a situation in which the ruling party wins 14 seats, the opposition 15 seats and both honourable gentlemen win as independents, a coalition would be necessary to form the government. Both parties would scramble to offer them the most attractive and safe Cabinet package. At that point, not having been elected as members of any political party, the question of resigning from a political party and crossing the floor would be inapplicable to them. Under the Belize Constitution, the anti-defection provisions only apply to members of the House of Representatives who are elected as a member of a political party. They would effectively be able to exercise leverage over whichever government they coalesced with through the ever-present threat of crisscrossing the floor if they believe they are being undermined. Party hawks argue that given past history, this is exactly what the two representatives will try to engineer and that the party should act before they do.

This scenario while clearly possible, on closer scrutiny, is unlikely to happen. First, to declare independent candidacy thirty days before an election is seriously risky business. It is risky because party voters would view such action as an unforgiveable act of party betrayal. Non-partisan voters would view it as unstable action by politicians who can’t make up their minds where they want to go. Such a sudden switch, when campaign fires are most intense and the propaganda onslaught frenetic, creates a highly unstable situation. Voters tend to view sudden, last minute actions with deep suspicion. The two politicians are known to prefer highly controlled electoral environments. Thus, this scenario of an eleventh hour independent candidacy creates a crazy, unstable environment which they have historically eschewed. Secondly, even if the experiment were to work with the two representatives at the center of a coalition government, they would effectively be under siege with both parties waiting to sink the long knives. This is not a good situation for ambitious, young politicians to find themselves in; admittedly, though, history teaches us that yesterday’s radicals are today’s conservatives. The better analysis is that with the knowledge that there are few safe seats and being now outside of Cabinet, those representatives will aim for maximum stability within their constituencies. Nevertheless, in the back alleys of politics the unexpected becomes the expected. The party is therefore obliged to examine its own options and hold them in reserve.

The path to martyrdom

The only way to neutralize the possibility of eleventh hour desertion is to put new candidates in those constituencies. One way is for the party to expel the representatives and install new candidates in their place. This option is not without its difficulties. The Opposition would most likely seek a court declaration that the expulsions have caused those two seats to be effectively vacated. The Constitution is silent as to what happens where sitting representatives are expelled from their party, but the court has read words into the constitution in Belize before. Whether in a by-election or general election, under circumstances where there has been expulsion, it is easy to see sympathy vote going in favor of the martyred representatives. The second way is to run new candidates against the representatives in fresh contested conventions. This opens up other difficulties. In this scenario, stitched-up intra-party fault lines would burst open and voters would probably vote in protest against what they perceive as heavy-handed party action. This situation is markedly different from where the representatives themselves resign from or abandon their party. Expulsion or a contested convention could both lead right back to square one.

The prime minister should therefore be advised to avoid expulsion or fresh conventions at this time. At the same time, it is only fair that those who purport to fly the party’s standard should be expected to publicly demonstrate their loyalty to their party. If this is not readily forthcoming, the prime minister should be advised to allow the party machine to exercise its available options in the party’s best interest.

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