The Tribune

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

THE Senate is ineffective, irrelevant and has evolved over the years into a platform for failed politicians according to House of Assembly chief clerk Maurice Tynes.

Mr Tynes expressed this opinion while making his contribution to the Bahamas Constitutional Commission at the British Colonial Hilton.

He said the upper chamber should serve as a place to review legislation and the actions of the House of Assembly, but it does neither and should therefore be abolished.

“The original thinking behind the second chamber was that it should be constituted by older and hopefully wiser men who would bring a different perspective, a political non-partisan approach when reviewing legislation.

“The Bahamas Senate, beginning with the introduction of political parties, has moved away from these principles. The Senate over the years has been used either a platform for younger aspiring politicians or for candidates who lost an election but wanted to retain their visibility,” he said.

“The second chamber of the parliament has not served as an effective check on the executive, it has very seldom questioned, amended or rejected legislation elected by the House.

“To make matters worse, it meets infrequently and only to consider legislation passed by the elected House. Although the constitution has empowered the Senate to draft and initiate legislation this has been done on very, very few occasions.”

Mr Tynes said that the second chamber should be eliminated and a unicameral parliament be created.

He also recommended that a system of proportional representation should be introduced to replace the current “winner-take-all system”.

He said: “Our current system produces to many distortions in the results of balloting and most often the results do not accurately reflect the will of the people.

“Case in point: the recent 2012 general election where the FNM received 42.1 per cent of the votes cast but only received 21 per cent of the House seats. A system of proportional representation on the other hand would reduce the level of electoral distortions and ensure that there is a more direct relationship between the number of votes received by a party and its proportion of seats in the legislature.”

According to Mr Tynes, under such a system, instead of marking one ‘X’ Bahamians would be required to mark two Xs – one for their constituency representative and one for the party of their choice.

Political parties would be required to nominate 38 constituency representatives and also produce a list of 16 names to be apportioned in descending order according to the percentage of party votes they received.

“Such a system,” he said, “should ensure that the distribution of seats would more fairly reflect the will of the people and it would also assist smaller parties in gaining representation in Parliament. This will also ensure that persons with specific expertise, who are not inclined to run for a seat but whose names appeared on the party lists, would be represented in parliament.”

Mr Tynes also recommended that the constitution be amended to change the makeup of the Constituencies Commission.

“The Commission should be chaired by a Bahamian judge , chosen by the Chief Justice,” he said.

“Other members could include the Director of Lands and Surveys, the Director of the Department of Statistics and a lawyer from the Attorney General’s Office appointed on the advice of the AG.

“The Commission should be appointed for full parliamentary term and should be mandated to make its report by the third anniversary after the last general election. I would also suggest that the most recent census by the Department of Statistics form the basis of the compilation of the register rather than the list of registered voters.”