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By SIR
ARNOLD AMET
The question of party integrity
THE existence of too many political
parties is a major source of political instability and poor
standard of governance.
Our political party system is too immature and fragile.
Our political constituency is similarly still in the process of
maturation and is fragile. We have not developed the political
literacy, maturity and thus stability and discipline to establish
a very limited number of major parties capable of returning a
consistency of numbers to form stable governments.
Consequently, we have continued to need multi-party coalitions to
form governments.
Our experience has demonstrated that our political parties and
individuals have not been able to maintain commitment and
stability within these coalitions of multiple parties to last the
full term of a Parliament, with regular changes of governments or
changes of coalition partnerships. When parties in a coalition
government can, within a short period of time, either withdraw or
are expelled from the coalition because of threats of or in fact,
resulting in a motion of no-confidence as has been our experience
since independence, considerable political instability results.
When we continue to experience these kinds of turnover in
coalition partnerships and formation of governments, we have to
wonder whether many of the parties and individual leaders really
have integrity.
We have to wonder whether any of these parties really have any
major policies by which they formed coalitions and by which they
are to be distinguished from the others.
A coalition government of multiple small parties does not lend
itself to political stability and consistency of policy
formulation and implementation.
Policy decision-making in such a government of multi-party
coalition is even more difficult when the partners are not able to
readily agree.
Maintaining coalition caucus discipline is also very difficult, as
we have experienced.
Maintaining discipline in decision-making and executive government
can prove to be difficult when there are too many small parties
within a coalition government, when leaders of these many small
parties do their own thing without discipline, accountability and
consistency.
We continue to witness the lack of discipline and stability in
decision-making, when executive government ministers publicly
debate their difference of opinions and conduct executive
decision- making and discipline in the media.
These are symptoms of a governance structure which is immature and
which often results in political instability.
The recent appointment process of the police commissioner is a
classic example of factional lobbying for different candidates,
which resulted in considerable instability within the police force
as well demean the integrity and credibility of our governance
processes’ management.
Many other examples stand out over the years.
Progressively, because of this instability in political
governance, we have had the tenure of many more senior officers
expiring and being left in acting positions for many months and in
some instances for more than a year.
This simply is not good for the morale of the public and the
institution concerned as we have witnessed with the police force.
As we count down the months towards this year’s general election,
we are witnessing the formation of more and more new political
parties. This will lead to even more confusion amongst the large
rural voter population.
I simply cannot understand how there can be such diversity in
major policy differences that warrant formation of more parties.
Many new parties are being formed by current MPs, who have been
members of other current parties.
There are new parties being formed by new candidates, with
variations of policies that I believe will simply confuse our
simple voters from the rural constituencies.
The new limited preferential voting system is going to be
complicated enough for our people without being confused more by
more parties.
It is quite extraordinary that many leaders of the new parties are
going about declaring their ambitions.
What political power has done is to inflate the ego of these
individuals to such heights that they are flying way up there on
cloud nine.
Inflated egos are sure recipes for grabbing for power at any cost
including abuse and corruption.
We have inflated our ego to such a height that we will go to any
lengths and costs to make it happen, by hook or by crook.
If we are going to progress to greater political maturity and
stability, many of the small parties must swallow their pride and
ego and merge with bigger parties, because I do not believe that
many have any real major policy differences that the public will
understand.
The clearest evidence of this is the relative ease and frequency
with which parties are prepared to go into coalition partnerships
with different parties that one has to wonder whether any real
policy principles enter into discussions.
The coalitions over the years have been so many and confusing that
one cannot believe that there are any real policy differences that
parties are prepared to abide by in distinction from others.
I believe that one measure that could bring greater stability and
maturity to the political governance process would be to increase
significantly the requirements for the formation of political
parties; in particular the minimum number of registered financial
members to qualify to register as a political party.
 
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