Mixed views on elected Senate

By Prince Moore

With the process of Constitutional Reform currently in the early stages, Attorney-at-law Kenyatta Powell wants to see a fundamental change in how members of the Jamaican Senate are appointed.

Mr Powell believes lawmakers should be accountable to the people and therefore should be elected.

In that regard, he's suggesting that a different approach be used to determine candidates for election to the Senate, one in which the candidates would have to meet “certain qualifying criteria… if what we are really after is to get people into the Senate with certain expertise.”

“At the end of the day, those people should be subject to the minimum amount of popular accountability, which would be an election,” he stressed.

Mr Powell was speaking Friday on Radio Jamaica’s Beyond the Headlines, as was another attorney, Bert Samuels, who, in contrast, argued for retention of the traditional non-elected Senate.

His main concern regarding the change to an elected Senate is “the likelihood of gridlock that we see happening in the US, where you have a Senate that belongs to one party, by way of a majority, and a Lower House that belongs to another party.”

“That’s the formula for gridlock, and holding up legislation and people deliberately stopping government from going forward” he stressed, pointing to the current debt ceiling crisis in the United States between with the two chambers of Congress divided along party lines.

Barbara Blake Hannah was one of eight Independent Senators, appointed after the 1983 parliamentary election was boycotted by the People’s National Party, leaving the incumbent Jamaica Labour Party with control of all 60 seats then in the House of Representatives.

She said she enjoyed the experience of being in the Upper House, not beholden to either of the two dominant political parties.

That she was an adherent of the Rastafarian faith was also significant for her, she said, expressing doubt that “if it were an elected Senate, many Rastas who would be voted (for) or even stand for election”.

On the other hand, she noted that “an elected Senate would also give an opportunity for people to justify their right to be in the Senate.