Kothdiwala suggests President now in ‘awkward’ position of having to choose DLP senators

The 18-year-old who had been preparing to become the country’s youngest member of the Upper House of Parliament, is struggling to make sense of the arguments of Independent senators who took issue with the proposed constitutional amendment intended to facilitate teenage representation in both the House of Assembly and the Senate.

Youth activist and law student Khaleel Kothdiwala, who had been named by Prime Minister Mia Mottley for appointment as a Government Senator once the amendments had passed, insisted that it is logical that persons allowed to vote in an election should be able to serve in the country’s highest decision-making bodies.

He also believes that by not supporting the other constitutional amendment aimed at ensuring the opposition is represented in the Upper House, Independent senators have placed President Dame Sandra Mason in an “awkward” position where she must “enter the political fray” to choose two senators from the ranks of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP).

Last Friday, Independent senators failed to support the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2022 which sought to reduce the age for eligibility to sit in Parliament from 21 to 18, and give the political party with the second-highest number of votes in a general election – in this case, the DLP – the opportunity to appoint two senators in a case where there is no Leader of the Opposition.

Although he made a case for both changes, more personal to the teenager was the rejection of voters ages 18-21 from the possibility of representing the people in either house of Parliament.

“If you believe the age for the Parliament should be 21, then the necessary implication of that must be that the age to vote in Barbados must be 21 also. That is a controversial conversation, that is a significant change and that would have to be the subject of a year-long constitutional process,” Kothdiwala told Barbados TODAY.

“The thing that must be done to maintain the internal coherence of the law is to lower the age to 18 to ensure that we are in a position to have those two ages converge. In my view, it offends and it affronts the law to have this glaring anomaly and, therefore, I know of nothing that could be more urgent than the view that says that we must seek at all times to maintain that coherence in the law.”

The first-year law student at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill campus also rejected the suggestion that an 18-year-old be allowed to sit in the Senate but not as an elected Member of Parliament.

“Again, that strikes me as a little anti-democratic because, at the end of the day, Members of Parliament get there not by appointment but by election, where seven or eight or 9,000 people in a constituency go and evaluate choices,” said Kothdiwala. “And I cannot accept an argument that says ‘I know better than these 7,000 people and so, to protect these 7,000 people from being represented by an 18- or 19-year-old, that we should not even give them the option’. That is not how democracy works.”

Despite Prime Minister Mottley’s expressed intention shortly after the general elections in January to appoint him to the Upper House, Kothdiwala said he understood that could only occur if the amendments were passed.

Leader of Government Business in the Senate, Senator Lisa Cummins adjourned debate on the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2022 last Friday when it became clear that the required two-thirds majority vote to pass the amendments would not have been achieved.

Nevertheless, the Barbados scholar said the call to serve was “remarkably humbling” and the recent turn of events represented a missed opportunity for Barbados to distinguish itself from many of its neighbours in the region and across the world.

“We have 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25-year-olds in Barbados today who are told that they are too young. So imagine what it would have been like for that eligible age group to hear that people as young as 18 or 19 or 20 can serve in the highest court of the land, in the Parliament of this country. That would have been an important symbolic victory for youth representation but it would also have been an important substantive victory,” he said.

“I think that it was clearly a departure from tokenism because there is no tokenism in terms of a legislative chamber. It is a weighty responsibility.

“I regretted deeply what happened in the Senate and I regretted the fact that we were not able to go there at this time. That regret, to me, is very personal and I think that at times there was a conflation of the issues and the fact that sometimes commentators allowed the personality and the person to cloud the policy and the issue and I deeply regret that that had to take place,” he added.

Kothdiwala, however, endorsed the appointment of attorney-at-law Gregory Nicholls for his keen grasp of the law, prior experience in the senate and his debating skills. He said this was no deviation from the PM’s stated desire to include young people at the high levels in the country.

“Let us be clear, we have in the Senate, Senator Andwele Boyce who, to the best of my knowledge, is young unless he had aged overnight; we have Dr Crystal Haynes; we have Senator Lorenzo Harewood; and we have Senator Shanika Roberts-Odle,” Kothdiwala pointed out.

“That is not to say that the other eight senators are not young and young-spirited, but that those four, in particular, are young people. That is four out of 12 Government senators – which represents one-third of the Government’s side – are young people and I cannot recall a Senate in recent memory, certainly not very, very recently, that has had 33 and a third per cent of the Government bench being as young as this one,” he added.

Kothdiwala also commented on the failure of the other constitutional change to make it through the Senate.

The loudest of the senators’ arguments against the proposed amendments on both eligibility for Parliament and the appointment of opposition senators, hinged on the view that such changes could be determined during the national period of constitutional reform promised by the Prime Minister.

“I support entirely the view that the Constitution is a sacred and sacrosanct document and that we need to have a period of constitutional reform that lasts the year as has been proposed, and that reform of the constitution must be done in a sober way,” Kothdiwala said.

“But equally, I believe that we must rise to the moment and recognise that Barbadians only two months ago went to the polls, and certainly the people who wanted to be counted determined in overwhelming numbers, more than 70 per cent of Barbadians, that they wanted the Barbados Labour Party government to govern and governing means that you have to meet the moment.”

In Kothdiwala’s estimation, the absence of an Opposition Leader places upon the President the burden of choosing senators in circumstances where an opposing political party, having failed to win a seat in Parliament, is likely to be “deeply divided”.

“It was a less desirable proposition that a Head of State would have to enter a political fray and have to be able to decide what are fundamentally political issues,” he said.

“An ancient English jurist would say that a Head of State is the dignified part of our Constitution and long may that continue. The amendments sought to alleviate the Head of State from having to approach an opposition party to require them . . . to decide . . . two people to send and then to nominate and propose those persons,” he added. kareemsmith@barbadosstoday.bb

Readers can view Khaleel Kothdiwala’s full interview on BT’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BarbadosToday/