December 27, 2001

Dear Sir,

I fully understand Dr. Eva Hodgson's hope for a better political system as expressed in her December 27th article. I would encourage her to continue to think alternatively. The subject of the relevancy of party politics is not new. What is new is that the level of disquiet and disillusionment has reached new heights when persons like Dr. Hodgson steps away from encouraging people to join the labour party by suggesting that they look to locally driven reform instead. Twenty years ago her comments would have been "right up my alley" but having tried to articulate those suggestion along with others like Stuart Hayward and the late independent Senator Arnott Jackson I've come to an approach that is shaped by some social and psychological realities. My suggested approach would be to create initiatives that destroy the current anti social anti democratic operational mode of current party structure.

One of the objectives underlying in this whole thought is to bring political representation closer to the people. Another is to make such representation more accountable to the electorate were the electorate can count on the integrity; honesty and the virtue of their representatives standing on their convictions. The third objective is that the country would be better served when the focus is made to be the countries good as opposed to party survival.

A few changes can facilitate those objectives. 1. Have fixed election periods i.e. every four years. 2. Remove the terminology and function of a party whip. 3. That the candidate selection process be by government sponsored primaries legislated as a part of the general electoral process which enables the constituents to choose their candidates as opposed to party hacks. 4. Have the Senate as an elected body one from each parish and support the senators with a parish vestry. 5. Advance Human Rights legislation to guarantee protection for parliamentarian's political opinion. 6. Let the leader of the country receive a mandate directly from the electorate. 7. Have legislation that offers the electorate the right to sponsor a motion through the format of a proposition. What we will end up with is a system that captures the best of what we had in the past made stronger by the lessons learned by some aspects of our current executive leadership style.

The public needs to create its own wish list as an agenda and insist on the party's adoption of the public agenda in their platform. It was 37 years ago when independent MCP's moved to party politics.

Today it will take a political party with a commitment towards decentralisation and a greater individuality amongst their representatives to bring change. A party supported by the will of the people who are committed to reform can bring the country nearer to what Dr. Hodgson is speaking about. Believe it or not that was one of the reasons I joined the UBP in fact I had this conversations with Stuart Hayward in 1990 his comment to me was "at least the UBP will have an independent virus".

KHALID A WASI

Pembroke