In Thursday's Belize Times, the Prime Minister was quoted as saying that he favors an elected Senate. But apart from that quite cavalier announcement, the PM was short on specifics. Musa would only say that he would need to consult with his party before making a decision. And after weighing all that, the PUP will put out a policy paper making clear its position.
The Political Reform Commission suggested en elected Senate as far back the year 2000. And if he needs support within his party, he need only look to his former Development Minister Mark Espat. In July of last year, he gave a speech calling for a Senate elected by popular vote, with an equal number of members elected for each district.
But one man who isn't convinced is Opposition Leader Dean Barrow. He's decidedly lukewarm about the idea of an elected Senate and more so about the Prime Minister's announcement. He told us as much today.
Hon. Dean Barrow, Leader of the Opposition
"The Prime Minister has seized on this as a way of creating a distraction, as a way of diverting attention from all of his most recent misdeeds, as a way of trying to clutch onto a populist escape route. The fact that he's offered no kind of details, I think is proof positive of this. I think it is another instance of the Prime Minister's untrustworthiness, the Prime Minister's lack of credibility, and I dismiss it."
And while he may not think much of the Prime Minister's thus far half hearted embrace of the elected Senate, Barrow does have to seriously consider the proposal in its own right. To that end, Barrow met with Godwin Hulse this afternoon to discuss the idea. Hulse has been the most prominent champion of an elected Senate. This interview was done before that meeting but the Opposition Leader made it clear, he needed some convincing.
Hon. Dean Barrow,
"I have to tell you that so far there is nothing that I have heard that convinces me in the least that this is a good idea. If you have an elected Senate, it is going to be every candidate for himself. The mass parties who have the organizational machinery and who in varying degrees have money, of course one mass party far more than the other, but the fact is that they are the ones who are going to be advantaged and they are the ones who are going to be favored in any kind of open ended electoral contest."
Barrow says his biggest problem is what the idea of a Senate empowered as it is in the United States which is a republican system. Those elements he believes just won't work here.
Hon. Dean Barrow,
"The objective can't be to have a Senate that is exactly parallel in terms of its power to the House of Representatives. That's a formula for paralysis, that's a formula for confusion. That's a formula for inefficiency. Conceptually, what is the role of the Senate? For me it is for, like I said, to act as a watchdog, not to act as a parallel force. It is not to say that the West Minister Model is perfect, it is not to say that the West Minister model can't be tweaked, it is not to say that you can't borrow some of the elements from the republican system and graft those onto the West Minister system but I don't think an elected Senate with the kind of powers that the elected Senate in the United States has is something that can be done seamlessly. I don't think it is something that can be done without making a hash of the democracy that we practice currently."
Speaking with Godwin Hulse after his meeting with the Opposition Leader this afternoon, he says that he is encouraged and convinced that his position and Barrow's are not that far apart. We'll discuss that with Senator Hulse later this week.
