BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Dec 4, CMC – Attorney General Vincent Byron Jr. has defended the decision of the government to table legislation limiting the tenure of the Prime Minister.
Byron, who is also Legal Affairs Minister, told television viewers that the Tenure of Office of Prime Minister Bill, 2015, “ is one of a suite of legislative provisions that the Government of Team Unity had pledged to implement during the very long campaign.
“If you recall the campaign was solidly based on the issue of good governance. We had indicated that we would “restore democracy” and promote a prosperity agenda.”
He said that the issue of restoring democracy was based on the concept of good governance.
“Good governance became very critical as the previous administration…had been violating a lot of the constitutional provisions, a lot of legislative provisions and the whole spirit of adhering to the administration of justice, and so we promised through our manifesto to have this suite of good governance legislation.”
He said that the bill, which had its first reading in Parliament last month, will seek to prevent the abuse of power by leaders who can become entrenched in their office for an extended period of time.
He said that “term limits basically is based on legislation that has found wide spread introduction around the world,” and that the legislation restricts the number of terms a leader of Government is allowed to hold.
“This is a good practice,” he added.
Under the proposed legislation, “A person who is appointed Prime Minister under the Constitution shall… not be appointed Prime Minister under the Constitution to hold office as Prime Minister for more than two terms as prescribed by this section”.
“ Section (3) states that the Office of Prime Minister shall become vacant (a) on the expiration of the period specified in this section; (b) if the incumbent dies or resigns.”
Meanwhile, Byron said that the government would pursue constitutional reform as a part of its governance agenda
“The Government of National Unity will be working to establish good governance and so for us a good governance agenda means restructuring the very fundamental goods in this country.”
He said constitutional reform is also imperative in the process to restore democracy and that the Timothy Harris government intends “to look at the constitution and will be embarking on constitutional reform that would have at the centre of it electoral reform changing various electoral processes”.
