Part 3

The proposal for an executive president

In effect the proposal in the Working Document is to merge duties and responsibilities of the existing post of ’ceremonial’ President with those of the Prime Minister to create a new post of President. To avoid confusion I shall refer to the existing post of president as ’ceremonial’ President and the new post as executive president.

The method for selecting the executive president is complicated, and I hope that readers would not be bored by description of the details of this process. Nevertheless it is important to be aware of these details to properly understand the thrust of the new arrangements in the Working Document.

At a general election to the House of Representatives, each political party participating in the election shall designate a candidate for one of the seats as the nominee of that party for the post of executive president. A second candidate shall be named for the same constituency but a single vote shall be cast for both candidates.

When a party wins a majority of seats in the House of Representatives the person whom they have nominated to be executive president is declared to be executive president, he/she is then not a member of the House of Representatives and his ’running mate’ takes the seat of that constituency. The need for a second candidate to be nominated in the same constituency as the designated executive president is to avoid a bye-election. Where a nominated candidate is elected but does not become the executive president his/her ’running mate’ does not hold a seat in the House.

However, the complication starts if a party wins the majority of seats in the House of Representatives, but the candidate whom that party has nominated does not win his/her seat. In this case the political leader of that party shall select an elected member to be the executive president.

If the political leader fails to make such a selection the Speaker shall conduct an election among elected members of the majority party of the House of Representatives for executive president (by open ballot). Further complication arises where no political party holds the majority of seats; in this case two or more political parties could join to secure a majority.

I shall not delve further into these complications at this stage lest readers lose understanding of the main concept which is that - A candidate in the general election is designated by each party as nominee to be executive president and - The successful candidate of a successful party does not take a seat in the House of Representatives but become executive president.

There shall also be a vice-president selected by the executive president who must also be a member of the House of Representatives, a seat which he continues to hold. I shall refer to this again later.

I should reiterate at this stage that I am not in favour of this change from a ’ceremonial’ president and a prime minister to that of executive president. In addition, if there were to be an executive president, it is my view that a direct election of executive president should be held as is the case of the United States. I shall discuss this matter more fully later in this series of articles.

In a previous article I stated my view that the main power that the Prime Minister holds in the present Constitution derives from his power to appoint ministers. In view of this I shall now describe the arrangements proposed in the Working Document for the appointments of ministers.

There shall be a Cabinet which shall consist of not more than 25 members selected by the executive president in his discretion. The members of the Cabinet should include the executive president, the vice president the two majority leaders from the House of Representatives and the Senate (this will be discussed later).

The executive president may appoint not more than four members of the Senate and four members of the House of Representatives as Ministers. However, it is important to note that this limitation on the number of ministers that can be appointed from the Senate and the House of Representatives can be changed by a simple majority in the Parliament, no special majority is required.

All other Ministers can be appointed from outside of Parliament. Thus such Ministers will neither be elected (as they would be if they came from the House of Representatives) or selected by persons who have themselves been elected (as in the Senate at present).

Dr Ghany argues in the booklet that he has prepared for the round of consultations on the Working Document entitled ’Changing Our Constitution’ that the fact that only four ministers will be taken from the House of Representatives changes the balance of power between the executive president and the Parliament in favour of the Parliament. However, I would point out that the Executive President will still have the carrot of appointing any Member of Parliament as a minister and (as pointed out above) the number that can be appointed as ministers from the Parliament can be changed by a simple majority. - To be continued