Cohabitation - the forgotten constitutional interpretation
There is no letting up of the debate on the constitutionality of the Presidential takeover of the Defence portfolio. Issues of sovereignty suzerainty and incumbency are all being gone into with a fine toothed comb, with some saying that it's not so much the constitutional minutiae that matters but the "holder of the post'' -- and others saying a constitution is an organic document that must be interpreted constructively.

It's time the people - the "sovereign'' mind you -- took issue with all of these arguments. For example, when the constitution says the people are sovereign, does it mean that the term "sovereignty'' applies insofar as how the people delegate their sovereignty and through which institutions?

Does "sovereignty'' mean that people have given over such and such a power to X and a different power to Y, to act as absolute untrammelled custodians of their "sovereign prerogative?'' I think not. If that's the interpretation, then it is as bad as saying that a constitution is to be interpreted strictly as if it was made up of mathematical formulae.

Sovereignty means Vox Populi -- the voice of the people -- to set out the concept in its bare bones. The people did not want their sovereignty to come unstuck in an extended period of gridlock between two of the constitutional structures to which they have supposedly "passed on'' their sovereign prerogative.

In other words, sovereignty implies an expectation, and this expectation is that there will be governance. Non-governance is certainly not the expectation of the sovereign, and gridlock is certainly not the expectation of the sovereign, however galling or complicated the constitutional circumstances.

The days of legalistic interpretations of concepts such as sovereignty are as passé the days when economic rights were not considered human rights. In other words, no amount of constitutional gobbledygook will detract from the fact that the people -- the sovereign -- vest certain powers in certain arms of government to govern and deliver the maximum possible on the expectation of the sovereign.

Now, the sovereign expectation is NOT that there will be a dip in economic activity because there are two branches of government engaged in a prolonged altercation.
The sovereign expectation is NOT that there will be a greater likelihood of hostilities, because a conflict with a rebel group in the periphery has been put on hold due to the confrontation between two different arms of government.

The sovereign expectation is NOT that the quantum of foreign aid that has already been pledged to the country is pruned down by the donor community because there is a gridlock in government engendering uncertainty and insecurity in the body politic.

Therefore, no matter who is constitutionally right or who is constitutionally wrong, it is wholly incumbent on the two branches of government that have created the governmental gridlock to resolve the problem as per the legitimate and plenary (amusing that the word "plenary'' is bandied about in the context of Executive and Legislature when all of these are but subordinate to the sovereign prerogative?) expectations of the sovereign.

Loose constitutional rationalizations are being complemented with talk about a mandate. The President as Executive claims she had a mandate that's equal to the mandate that is claimed by the Prime Minister as head of the legislature.
But neither party received a mandate to put a) economic development b) peace c) the country's long-term prospects in terms of infrastructure development and human development, at peril.

Therefore, despite the grandiose and tendentious claims on both sides on issues of who had the mandate "us or them,'' the fact is, that as of now, both sides are flouting the people's mandate with impunity and are acting in gross transgression of the mandates they have received albeit at different times.

Gridlock may be the inherent risk in all democratic political cultures. This is the argument for instance against a two chamber system. Two elected chambers can lead to political gridlock, unless one of them has primacy over the other.
But gridlock is one thing -- and total political rigor mortis is entirely another matter. No government and no political opposition can be heard to say that governance is temporarily held in abeyance because they cannot get along.

That's patently unconstitutional because the people -- the sovereign --- have bestowed two mandates precisely in order that there is uninterrupted governance.
The UNF says it has a mandate for peace. Now, it is being said that the UNF cannot any longer pursue this mandate because there is a takeover of the Ministry of Defence by the Executive. Close on the heels of this contention is the counter argument that the UNF does not need the Defence Ministry to pursue the peace process, and these opposed positions have resulted in a stalemate, which has resulted in prolonged political gridlock.

Yet another argument is that business as usual continues in spite of this contretemps, which is the most preposterous of all contentions made, because there is no business as usual in a situating in which not only the political process of peace negotiation has stalled, but also the process of economic regeneration has stalled.

Investors are pulling out. Aid is being withheld. Election phobia has engendered economic insecurity, which is in turn leading to stagflation. A mere routine passing of the budget definitely does not mean businesses as usual.

In other words it is a deliberate political wrecking of the people's mandate by the people's representatives in both Legislative and Executive branches of government. Either one branch of government must establish its primacy over the other, or there must necessarily be a compromise. Establishing primacy is the case in most forms of democracy where there are two chambers. That's the only way to prevent political gridlock, which usurps the sovereignty of the people.

But neither party involved in the current political standoff seems capable of establishing its primacy over the other. In which case this primacy can be only established by process of elections, which puts the issue of primacy to a test.
But elections if they are not contrary to the letter of the law laid down in the constitution, are certainly against the sprit of the constitution.

There is not just one but two uncompleted mandates given by the people, so what is the case for an election? If there is no case for an election, there is a case for compromise. If the two parties involved are not capable of compromise, then there is case for people power, to oust both Executive and Legislature in order that the people - the sovereign - can regain their carelessly usurped sovereignty.

Above all, there is no case for constitutional sophistry to obfuscate the one important point in all of the upstanding issues that involve this whole constitutional wrangle. Which is - the most salient factor in all of this pointedly is that people's sovereignty is being transgressed by the elected representatives, and either they compromise or are collectively shown the door by the people in any manner and means available to them.

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