(this piece by Dr Selwyn Ryan was published in the Trinidad Express captioned "State of paralysis")

ONE recalls Lloyd Best saying on election night 1995 that the political system in Trinidad and Tobago was in a state of precollapse. Has the system as we know it now collapsed? Arguably, the answer to the question is 'yes.' The collapse is however not total. It does not approximate what we have seen in places like Somalia, Fiji, Yugoslavia, or Afghanistan, to cite but a few of the worst cases of state collapse. The state apparatus still functions in respect of routine administrative

matters, and the security services and the Judiciary still execute their functions. Everywhere else, however, stasis and incipient paralysis obtains.

How do we put Humpty Dumpty back together again? Do we patch up the battered Westminster 'winner takes all' formula which has brought us to this pass and continue to muddle through, or do we experiment radically with some version of the power sharing paradigm?

We should bear in mind that the consensual power sharing model characterises most political systems, and that the one which we use flourishes mainly in the Commonwealth with some notable exceptions, among them New Zealand which transited to a mixed variant of the consensus model in 1996. There is a significant body of scholarly literature which argues that the pluralitarian or majoritarian 'winner takes all' formula is unsuited to

societies such as ours which are deeply divided or stratified on the basis of ethnicity as opposed to class. One of the most impassioned critics of the Westminster model in multi ethnic societies was the late Sir Arthur Lewis who argued that "what is good for a class society is bad for a plural society. To exclude the losing groups from participation in decision making clearly violates the primary meaning of democracy." Lewis argued that the Westminster model fails the test of fairness and leads to bad governance at best, or civil war at worst. Others such as the Dutch scholar Arend Lijphart, argue "that the real choice of plural societies is not between the British majoritarian model

and the continental consociational model, but between consociational democracy and no democracy at all."

It is however important to note that there are many variants of the power sharing model. These range from the routine type where one significant party agrees to work with one or two others in order to manufacture a majority to control Parliament, to the more granulated and fissiparous type such as exists in Switzerland and Belgium where several minor parties are yoked together to try and achieve the same end. Some are stable

coalitions of parties in which the leaders trust each other while others are fragile and coalitions collapse with great frequency. Some parties share power sequentially, taking turns in office, while others do so by dividing up the executive offices of the State.

While there is much to be said about the desirability of power sharing or even the absolute need for it in certain kinds of crisis situations, serious downsides are associated with its use.

Most, if not all coalitions, are characterised by intense and prolonged bargaining over the prime ministership and other key posts. Policy incoherence and inflexibility are also the norm since vested groups have to be persuaded that proposed policy changes will not upset the balance of power to their disadvantage. The system also encourages parties within the coalition to threaten to or to actually veto each other's policies if they have the leverage to do so. In many cases, policy making is not informed by consensus at all, but by the

mutual veto which the members of the cartel wield when necessary. In fact, in most of these systems, dissensus

and stalemate are the norm rather than consensus.

Petty and grand corruption are also a chronic feature of the consensus model since 'cops' and 'robbers' are in the same elite cartel with the former not being able to blow whistles on the latter due to fear that they might bring down the coalition. The system is also characterised by low transparency, minimal

accountability, and excessive cronyism and clientilism.

As the IDB noted in its comment on governance in Suriname which has a power sharing model, "patron client networks tend to lead to an under provision of collective goods and bias policy makers away from generalised policy making towards particularistic

administrative decisions." Another key problem in power sharing arrangements is the allocation of credit for things which go well and blame for things that go badly. How are these credits and liabilities shared on the campaign trail?

Who gets bragging rights for performance and boos for failure?

And what of Trinidad and Tobago? Would full power sharing work well here? I still have my doubts. Power sharing works better where leaders trust each other and where there is a consensual culture to sustain it. Both are lacking in our context. We however have no alternative but to experiment with a limited version of it if only to give us time to get out of the mess in

which we now find ourselves. If we are to put arrangements in place to elect a speaker, restructure the budget, fulfil campaign promises (or at least some of them), restructure the EBC, rationalise the constituency boundaries, appoint a Constitution Reform Commission and Commissions of Enquiry into the many

allegations about grand corruption, some sort of interim government of national unity must be put in place.

Either that, or there has to be an agreement by one of our two parties to give 'critical support' to the other to allow it to undertake an agreed number of legislative and other initiatives to get the system back on track and avoid sustained collapse. Such an arrangement was put in place in the United Kingdom in 1977 and lasted for a year until the Labour Government was brought down by a vote of no confidence.

There is however some curiosity as to why Mr Panday chose to put power sharing on the table. My own view is that Mr Panday is the proverbial 'fox,' and that his offer was driven by tactical considerations which are designed to avoid him being relegated to the political remand yard. Mr Panday also wishes to project himself as an apostle of inclusion and moderation, as well as

pre empt Mr Robinson from appointing Mr Manning to the office of Prime Minister. Mr Panday has signalled his true intentions by saying that he does not intend to "surrender power," as if power was his to retain or surrender! Little does he know that he has lost both political and moral power, and that he is in fact a lame duck PM and will certainly not be acceptable to the

country as its next President if it is true that that is the deal which he is trying to negotiate as the price of agreeing to surrender the prime ministership.