FROM time to time the question comes up as to whether the Jamaican Senate is fulfilling its best purpose, in a modern democracy.

Jamaica’s legislature is bi-cameral, consisting of two chambers — the lower chamber (the House of Representatives) and the upper chamber (the Senate). The function of the Senate as set out in the Jamaican Constitution is to review legislation passed in the House before it is signed into law by the governor general representing the head of State, The Queen.

Since the Constitution allows the party commanding the majority in the House to appoint eight of the 13 members of the Senate, it acts merely as a rubber stamp for anything the ruling party does in the House.

In addition to its arranged inability to act independently of the House, its capacity for informed debate and constructive review is further undermined by the practice of both the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) of appointing persons who have failed to win a seat in the House, retired politicians who need to be fed from the public coffers, those who aspire to contest for a seat in the House and wealthy financial contributors to the political parties.

Given those realities, one could be excused for asking why does Jamaica have a senate? The reason is that we copied the British bi-cameral legislative system. Great Britain had a reason for its Parliament to have two chambers. It developed because when the ruling class conceded adult suffrage, depriving itself of the control of the House of Commons by the votes of wealthy male property holders, it retained the right of review by having the upper chamber the House of Lords.

The very names explain the respective roles: the Commons and the Lords. In the United States of America, the Senate is there to ensure that the legislature is not dominated by the states with the largest population and therefore the largest number of Congressional representatives. This rebalancing is accomplished by giving each state two senators.

In Jamaica, the Senate has no role in class politics, such as in Britain, or the balancing of the differences in size of states as in the USA. The Jamaican Senate has no indispensable role in governance and has no mandate because it is not directly elected by the people.

There are two choices: either it should be abolished or it should be reformed to allow it to perform some useful purpose. One suggestion is that each party could appoint five senators and agree on three independent senators. Senate seats could be determined by popular vote on the basis of proportional representation.

This has two advantages. First, a government with the most seats but a minority of the popular vote would be kept in check, and, second, minority parties with a sufficient share of the popular vote but no seat in the House would have a voice on behalf of those who voted for them.

Senators could be elected as in the USA. In Jamaica’s case, we could have one elected senator for each parish, except St Andrew which would have two senators. This arrangement would give us 15 senators, hence no possibility of deadlock.

Let the debate begin.