The Speaker of The House: Partisan or Neutral? The Westminster Legacy in The Anglophone Caribbean

Abstract

Most legislatures have established procedures to investigate and, if necessary, remove undesired Members from office. In 1695, the British House of Commons empanelled a committee to investigate Speaker Sir John Trevor; in 1989 the US House of Representatives empanelled the Ethics Committee to investigate Speaker Jim Wright. However, in 1995 the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago failed to empanel the Committee on Privileges to investigate Speaker Seapaul; instead, the government asked Speaker Seapaul to resign quietly. She refused. Ms. Seapaul ceased to be Speaker only after being placed under house arrest following the government's declaration of a state of emergency, an outcome unthinkable in the United States and unlikely in the United Kingdom. The analysis of the role of the Speaker under the British, American and Commonwealth Caribbean Constitutions, as undertaken in this study, reveals different legacies of Westminster in these three Anglo-American democracies.