As the political climate gets a lot warmer as we approach the end of July, there is now another offer outside of the Debates Commission of the T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce for the holding of a leaders’ debate. That offer has really emerged out of a change of date made by the Chamber’s Debates Commission when they decided to vacate their earlier offer or decision (depending on which letter you reference) to hold a leaders’ debate on July 30 at the studios of CNMG on Maraval Road.
The public has now learnt that there were two completely different letters sent by the Chamber’s Debates Commission to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. Mrs Persad-Bissessar’s letter said that the Debates Commission had “decided” to hold a leaders’ debate on July 30, while Keith Rowley’s letter said that the commission had “proposed” to hold a debate on July 30.
That one act of incompetence has sucked all of the air of trust out of the political environment that is already very charged.
The Chamber of Commerce that usually upholds very high standards of performance in business and commerce now finds itself having to defend the incompetence of its Debates Commission who tried to pass this error off as a “storm in a tea cup.” It is much more than that and, in fact, it is because of that error that the offer for a broadcast consortium to hold a leaders’ debate on July 30 has emerged.
Indeed, the broadcast consortium offer for the use of the three leading breakfast show hosts on CNC3, TV6 and CNMG, namely Hema Ramkissoon, Fazeer Mohammed and Paul Richards respectively removes the eternal problem of finding a moderator acceptable to all sides.
Both government and opposition members have been on breakfast television with these three hosts in an unscripted manner over the last five years and they just ask questions and get answers without all of this drama about having UWI students doing research to frame questions that will be held by a secret panel for the moderator.
The easier way is to remove the set questions and stop copying the United States or anywhere else for that matter. Just have a homegrown, locally-made debate where the three co-moderators will ask whatever they want just like they do every morning from Monday to Friday. They just have to transfer that approach to prime-time television in the evening for 90 minutes.
All that would be required would be a timekeeper who will also rotate the co-moderators in sequence and request answers in sequence from the leaders. It is not rocket science and it is low in budget and high in credibility and trust. This would be our answer to the development of a debate culture in our society.
The problem with the Chamber’s Debates Commission is that they are trying too hard to copy the American model instead of cultivating a locally-grown one. In the United States, the president, by law, is not a member of the congress and he needs to earn the nomination of his party after a number of primary elections (if he is seeking re-election) and his opponent is not known until after the primary elections in his/her party. The nominating conventions only take place every four years so it is possible that the main contenders for the Democratic and Republican parties may never have debated each other before the presidential debates.
That is very different in this country where we operate a Westminster-Whitehall model in which the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, by law, must belong to the House of Representatives. As a consequence of that, they debate each other on a reasonably frequent basis on various bills and motions and ever since August last year, when the new Standing Orders for the House of Representatives were introduced they face each other directly in Prime Minister’s Question Time at the second sitting every month.
The reality is that they are very accustomed to debating and questioning each other and this has gone on for five years with more frequency since last August. Perhaps, it would be better to simply allow that culture of debate to continue outside of Parliament naturally and not artificially where the American debate model is force fitted into our politics.
Does anyone think that the trio of Ramkissoon, Mohammed and Richards would not make a good team of co-moderators for Persad-Bissessar and Rowley to continue doing what they have been doing as adversaries against each other in our country’s Parliament for the last five years? At the same time, there would be no need to frame questions to be kept by a secret panel to be released on the night in question to the co-moderators. They are individually capable of framing their own questions that they can keep in their heads until debate time. No allegations about leaks and who saw what beforehand, just plain and simple dialogue at night just like they do every single morning with our cup of coffee or tea.