We want and deserve more

Jamaica is ill-served by a public bureaucracy that has retreated from its responsibility to manage. The problem is compounded by politicians who believe not only that the job is theirs but that they are capable of doing it.

The result is abject failure, exemplified by the embarrassingly small economic growth since Independence, deepening poverty, high levels of crime, poor performance in education, a decrepit justice system, inadequate infrastructure as well as social and physical decay. There is, too, our intensely competitive and divisive political process that often breeds violence and has difficulty in fostering consensus.

While our politicians stumble around in management roles that were not designed for them and for which most have neither skill nor training, their core policy functions are poorly handled or left largely unattended.

The executive has become, at once, formulators and implementers of policy in a system that lacks real oversight or accountability. Parliament operates inefficiently. Constituency representation is often weak and, in some cases, ‘outsourced’ to, if not outright criminals, people who operate close to the margins.

These, of course, are not new problems. Nor are they limited to any specific party or administration. But Jamaicans are fed up. They want and deserve better. The environment is ripe for change.

Listening to the people

The transformation must start with our leaders engaging in a frank conversation with the people, listening to our ideas, being willing to act decisively for the good of the country. Small parliamentary majorities can’t be held up as the reason for failing to do what is right; and should appropriate policies be predicated on their impact on the next election?

In other words, our call is for a leadership that is beyond declarations of integrity, but a readiness to respond to the hard tests when they come – such as extraditing accused criminals, whatever their status in a political constituency, or how strategic their support may be considered to a party.

Time to mount efforts

It requires, too, that politicians and their critical supporters stop exploiting the ignorance of portions of our population. It is also time for our leaders to mount credible efforts to dismantle political garrisons.

This restructuring must also include reform of the legislature. The Senate must no longer be used as a place to reward the hard-core party faithful or those who fail at the hustings. Its members should be bright people, allowing the Upper House to operate as a serious, deliberative chamber and from where governments can appoint key ministers.

Sweeping changes

The legislature is not only inefficient, but expensive to operate. We propose that the seats in the House of Represen-tatives be cut from 60 to 45, the size of the Cabinet radically reduced, and better use made of backbenchers in the legislative process.

For two decades, Jamaica has talked local-government reform but has achieved little. We should cut the number of parish councils and consolidate their operations.

Parliamentarians must be paid decently but their remuneration should be linked to performance and a system of accountability. We must also introduce state-financed political campaigns, with clear limits on what parties can spend.

At the bottom line, we insist on a political process that is prudent and responsible, offering adequate representation to its constituents. It should be so structured to attract the best talent and the confidence to hold itself accountable for performance.

A Call to Action (Editorial Series) – Do it or leave!

Introduction:

Jamaicans have for decades complained about the state of our country – its poor economic performance, its poverty, its poor management, its crime, its violence. Many people have become fed up with the seeming inaction on the part of those we elect and the bureaucracy we pay to put things right.

Things cannot continue as they are; certainly not in these exceptional times. In a series of four editorials, The Gleaner is calling Jamaicans to action, to engage in a debate on the kind of country we want to live in, and to hold to account those who have abrogated their responsibility to manage, and to insist on a radical overhaul in the way we conduct our affairs. For it can’t continue this way.

Jamaicans are recognised as an exceptional and talented people. But for the nearly 50 years since Independence, our economy has been stagnant and the majority of our people live in poverty. Today, our country is adrift and confused.

This failure is primarily the result of public bureaucracy that has failed to perform, is managerially incompetent, and lacking in accountability.

And having been cowed by political bosses, our bureaucracy not only retreated from its central role of delivering quality service efficiently, but ceded its job to a political executive, whose role was conceived not to manage the government bureaucracy, but to establish policy and ensure accountability.

This failure of public-sector management tells in, among other things, our low quality of education, high crime rate, a justice system in which most people have lost trust, a corrupt police force, little or no economic growth and, ultimately, Jamaica’s underdevelopment.

In the 1960s, for example, Jamaica was on the lower rungs of the industrial development ladder and among the leaders on the human-development index.

Economic growth averaged six per cent a year. Singapore was still a rough-and-ready port city.

Today, Jamaica’s per capita GDP hovers at around US$5,000; Singapore’s is over US$31,000. Singapore is wealthy and orderly; Jamaica is lawless, disordered and seemingly ungovernable.

Yet, even as our bloated bureaucracy stagnates, it has been skilled at shaping a public sector to its own benefit and perpetuation. For instance, the Government’s direct wage bill is $127 billion, nearly $49,000 a year for every man, woman and child in the country, or approximately 12 cents of every dollar for all goods and services produced in Jamaica.

This, of course, does not include another $10 billion a year in non-contributory pension payments; duty concession on motor vehicles; massive leave entitlement; and for the central civil service, an anachronistic system of security of tenure. Looked at coldly, theirs, for all the complaints about pay, is essentially an easy, unproductive existence of little transparency and even less accountability.

This is unaffordable. It demands an urgent and radical overhaul. The current economic crisis and the reform of the public sector, mandated by Prime Minister Golding, provides a good opportunity that must be seized.

First, it must be made clear that transformation must be centred on fashioning the public sector to deliver services at lower costs and holding public-sector managers accountable. Jobs should be performance-based with clear systems to measure outcomes against deliverables. Employees should be paid for performance.

Anachronistic notions, such as security of tenure for public servants, must be revisited, making it easier to disengage non-performers. Indeed, we should perhaps declare a state of emergency on this matter, and urgently pass temporary legislation to allow for the necessary reforms.

While Prime Minister Golding and others in the political directorate are expected to set the vision, we expect that permanent secretaries and other senior public servants, in accordance with their job functions, must implement the plans. If they are incapable, they should go.