‘Cabinet Debacle and 116’ – farce or deceit?

Following the 9/11 attacks on the US, President Bush proposed and the Congress passed legislation to create the Department of Homeland Security in late 2002. In the UK, the Home Office was split in early 2007 into two departments, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, both to be headed by a Secretary of State. Here, such an action by the government does not require legislation. In Canada, the process is based on the Westminster model.

The two specific examples above are from the two systems of government often looked up to for inspiration for democratic governance. So, when Social Liberal Party’s presidential nominee, Ibrahim Ismail (Ibra) says that the Canadian ‘consultant, Professor Schmeiser, advised strongly that in any democracy, be it Presidential or Parliamentary system of government, the ultimate power to create cabinet posts lies with the Parliament’, either or both of them are being economical with the truth. If the Professor has ‘advised strongly’ here, he may well have done so on other issues. When you ‘advise strongly’ on such an issue, your impartiality as a consultant is questionable.

So, ‘a simple and innocent oversight [failing to mark section 116 in yellow highlight as substantially changed] by those who did the secretarial work’ appears to be more than a simple and innocent oversight. How can Ibra’s conscience be clear when he places the blame on the poor ‘those who did the secretarial work’?

Finally, by Ibra’s own admission, he and the other like-minded MPs in the Special Majlis during the past four years have only been motivated by personal vendetta against Qayyoom; so they all have a blind spot on issues beyond ‘the removal of Qayyoom’. Ibra writes:

“I have always maintained that Qayyoom can only be brought down by outsmarting him … I have focused on removing his powers bit by bit …. Every piece of legislation that we have passed has taken something away from him. The Amended Constitution will be the crown jewel in the process. That is why I have given every single minute of my time to the Constitution. I believe that Qayyoom’s armour has been split right down the middle now and he is at his most vulnerable.”

However, the provisions in section 116 which allows the Majlis to have a say when a serving president creates a government ministry seems, on face value, not an unreasonable way to keep his powers in check (albeit only an inadvertent outcome insofar as Ibra and the other like-minded MPs are concerned). But the devil in it, if there is one, may become visible when the provision is put into operation.