Political scientist Prof Selwyn Ryan quit the round table on constitutional reform soon after it came up with the idea to have a Ministry of Justice govern certain administrative aspects of the Judiciary.
’I sent a letter to the Prime Minister indicating that I did not think it was appropriate for me to continue since we disagreed on the fundamentals,’ Ryan said yesterday.
Sources said the last meeting of the round table Ryan participated in occurred in October 2008-the 20th one he attended.
Ryan announced his resignation from the round table, which operated out of the Office of the Prime Minister, yesterday morning at the University of the West Indies’ St Augustine campus, during a Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) forum entitled ’Proposed Constitutional Reform: One Step Forward or Two Steps Backward?’
Prime Minister Patrick Manning highlighted the proposed Justice Ministry during the ruling party’s political education meeting in Sangre Grande on August 17, saying ’it has the responsibility to provide all that the Judiciary requires to be able to exercise independently their independent function’.
In his presentation yesterday, Ryan examined the concerns raised by Chief Justice Ivor Archie about the proposed new ministry and its potential impact on judicial independence during the opening of the law term two weeks ago.
’The proposed Ministry of Justice, in my view, I don’t like it. In fact, it happened at a point when I thought that things were really getting out of hand so to speak, and I was extremely unhappy that the Minister of Justice idea was put on the table and it seems to be getting some traction. At that point, I felt I needed to get out of here (the round table),’ Ryan said.
About 15 minutes earlier, Ryan had agreed with the concerns raised by his fellow panellist at the forum, Opposition MP Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, about the merger of the powers of the President and the Prime Minister in the new draft Constitution.
’I am deeply worried about it and I have lost, I have taken every opportunity I have had in my columns (in the Express) to warn people about that Constitution, the constitutional provisions relating to the President. In fact, it’s largely why I resigned from the round table,’ Ryan said.
’I didn’t make a big political public issue about it but there came a time when I felt that because of the architecture, I was being induced in a way to support a number of provisions with which I didn’t agree fundamentally.’
Ryan, who was one of four panellists at the forum, had carried out public consultations along with Prof John La Guerre on behalf of the round table, which had come up with the latest draft Constitution for Trinidad and Tobago. Yesterday, however, he distanced himself from the document entirely.
The round table is now being chaired by political scientist Dr Hamid Ghany.
