Senator defends targeted approach to constitutional change

Senator Gregory Nicholls insisted on Monday that the Constitution of Barbados can be amended through targeted updates rather than only by a complete overhaul, as he defended the government’s handling of the current constitutional reform process.

 

Pushing back against the idea that the Constitution can only be changed through wholesale reform, he told the Senate during debate on the latest bill to amend the supreme law of the land.

 

He said: “What I want to do in this debate is to quell this continuing motion. That the only way you can alter the Constitution is by we say reform, and a wholesale reform of the Constitution is the only thing intended by Section 49 of the Constitution. They are not mutable or fungible.”

 

He added: “You can have constitutional alteration, and that is the proper terminology for it because that comprises a number of methods by which the Constitution can be changed. Amendment is only one of them, and you can have wholesale reform.”

 

Senator Nicholls noted that the government had chosen targeted amendments rather than full reform: “The government has elected and chosen in this instance to make an amendment to the Constitution to make provision for three things and I understand that there is a process that has gone through, the country has gone through in relation to constitutional reform and I myself was a part of that process, serving in the capacity as the deputy chairman of that commission.”

 

The government received a report last September and presented the findings to the public in January this year, which were debated for about two weeks.

 

Senator Nicholls directly addressed fellow government lawmaker Senator Andwele Boyce, stating that while the intention was to go through the Constitution chapter by chapter, things did not go according to plan.

 

“Although we give schematics, guidelines to how we would want to do this, discussions largely surrounded that of fundamental rights and only one of them — not life, not property, but the question of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation — that’s one of the largest things that we had to face almost every meeting. There were discussions about the political system and some discussions about citizenship, largely where we visited the diaspora across North America and in the UK, but outside of that, there has not been a consistent calling for each of the other chapters to be discussed with the same fervency and zeal in which the public had attended to those issues.”

 

He clarified that this approach reflected the government’s commitment to making practical, targeted constitutional changes while maintaining the existing framework.

 

Senator Nicholls also addressed the proposed changes regarding the Speaker of the House.

 

He highlighted differences between the Barbadian system and the British model. “Because in the United Kingdom, the Speaker of the House of Commons does not face election challenges by the major political parties. Once that person is elected Speaker by the members of the Commons, the major political parties do not stand candidates in that seat. That person is returned after the election no matter which government wins the election. We don’t have that in our system.

 

“Our Parliament is much smaller…. That isn’t, that is not practical. And one of the things that we have not spoken about is the fact that that person who is elected by the members or the people in the constituency has no voice in any single debate for the ensuing five years or however long the parliamentary term lasts, and that is unfair to that segment of the population.”

 

On the topic of ministers in both Houses, he said: “No one can fault the requirement of the ministers to visit either House to participate and lead in the debate, to answer questions and to engage with members of other Houses.”

 

He also stressed the need to update electoral and constituency boundaries to reflect demographic shifts.

 

“We can’t put ourselves in a situation, Mr President, where demographic change would mean that every election cycle, the constituencies change. And that will cause chaos in Barbados because we know our political boundaries, Mr President, by way of the parish boundaries. That has been the norm in Barbados. We have settled there but you imagine if we did not adjust the percentages to be more reflective of these demographic trends that we have, where a small change automatically requires the change of boundaries…. We broaden that framework to allow for the necessary changes where there is a greater shift in the population that merits a change and not merely adhering to a smaller number.”

 

He gave the assurance that these amendments are not politically motivated. “These are not changes intended to affect any particular boundary to give any particular advantage.”

(LG)