THE EDITOR: The TT Revenue Authority (TTRA) is not a legal construct that the courts can uphold. It effects a change in the Constitution but it was created by legislation passed with a government two-seat majority. If this is allowed, then anything can be changed in the Constitution by a simple majority. It would create both a confusion in laws and a confliction of jurisdictions.

Also, as the Constitution is not set up to deal with those types of situations, a whole different category of legality would have to be evolved, standing on its own account. This evolution would then be piecemeal and uncertain and always be underdeveloped.

You can think of it as comparable to government contract workers: what they tell you this year will change next year – or even next month – by which time they will no longer be around to answer the queries arising.

To begin with they had no authority and thus they cannot help explain anything. On top of all of that the next government of a different party stripe with a one-seat majority can pass a whole new round of legislation adapting the structure or dissolving it or creating a parallel structure.

Or is some court going to declare that there must be at least a two-seat majority? In any case, the Constitution would be meaningless and effectively defunct and irrelevant.

Presently the nation is in this dead end because the Rowley Government does not have the imagination to govern under the Constitution. All it knows how to do is impose imperatives. So it exists to find more and more areas where it can spread its stylised rule ideology, to expand the "command" feel and reach and thereby to multiply suited personnel.

E GALY

via e-mail

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