Ronald Thwaites | ‘Set Han’ against ourselves

One of Prime Minister Holness’s more consequential statements recently was his understanding of how the advancement of the nation is cramped by unresponsive public bureaucrats and the obtuse systems they control.

Alarmingly, he is probably right that with better delivery, ten times the outcomes could have been realised from the same investments. Can we comprehend what that would mean for the quality of Jamaican lives?

But sadly, it is likely that despite his understanding and good intent, there is little his, or, indeed, any administration can do by themselves to alter inbred inefficiency.

Take, for example, the officer holding a critical post in an important ministry who has been “acting” uncertainly for upwards of five years because the incumbent’s suspension has yet to be resolved. Or the school which has been long closed but ‘permanent’ staff still have to be paid. Then there is the teacher who clearly has mental problems but remains in her institution because of the archaic processes required for her removal.

Worse still was the instance of a predator principal whose separation from post was overturned because of a minor procedural breach and had to be reinstated to continue his misdeeds.

DELAY COSTS

Try navigating the morass of land and housing-development processes through municipal and other authorities where an applicant, after paying all fees, must add ten per cent and more to the project cost for the bribes necessary for reasonable facilitation. There is not enough space to tell you about the health, security, and civil works expensive and life-sapping inefficiencies.

There are few areas of interaction with the State where contrived delay does not undermine the brisk performance that a poor country like ours needs to thrive. Complicated red tape is purposeful. It is supposed to protect against corruption. Instead it fosters it.

Many of us have been powerless so long that we use authority to disable rather than enable. Then we become victims of our own tendencies. Taxi drivers, motorcyclists, police, and blue-light politicians have schooled many other road users to devise their way of beating the rules. They just ignore them. Children learn. Do what you please in order to get through. We veer between lawlessness and overregulation. The two tendencies reinforce each other.

All the above instances and many more occur because job security has replaced accountability. There are no sanctions for poor performance in the public sector barring egregious criminal conduct – and even then.

CULTURE CHANGE?

Andrew Holness says culture change is needed to cure the malady. What does he mean by that? And how would political behaviour and public policy contribute to or impede such change? After all, why did the Essex Valley project take so much longer than necessary to be completed? Who is bothering to find out, let alone do something about the underlying causes?

Take Daryl, for instance. Impetuous from birth and righteously determined to have telecommunications restored post-Melissa, frustrated by delay, he leaps over procurement rules for which he is getting a proper cussing, to which he responds in typical Warmy-esque fashion. Sideshow! Tell me who is examining the emergency procurement rules to determine their efficiency and fairness.

BILLIONS UNACCOUNTED

Alas, the mould of turgid bureaucracy has seeped much deeper into the tissues of state functioning. Listen to the baying at the Public Accounts Committee last week about the scores of agencies, departments, and public companies who provide no regular accounting for the billions of taxpayer dollars they receive every year through government. This is the most irresponsible kind of public malaise, which this prime minister and those before and after him can do little to check. The culture of unaccountability has proved resistant to change.

The records at Gordon House will show the many occasions the danger of absent surveillance of public-sector accounting and performance were raised by a former member for Kingston Central.

I was ignored or humoured for proposing that any agency or ministry in accounting arrears, after a reasonable period of grace, ought to have their funding suspended. The reaction was understandable. It would be political suicide to follow my suggestion. There is little incentive to be compliant - except conscience. And whatis that anyway?

The auditor general can only sample a few institutions and is routinely ignored after a little stir in the media. Parliamentary oversight of public funds is a joke.

The “t’ing set”. Nothing short of elevated national consensus and united leadership will bring about safeguards to protect the hundreds of billions that are taken from our pockets every year. It is that bad.

EPSTEIN AND US?

Still on culture change. How does a guy like Epstein manage to lure hundreds of the most powerful rulers in the world into his ring of paedophilia? What does it say about them and their official roles?

And where were the parents of Epstein’s horde of underage children and young women who served as bait for these fat guys? What church or school did they attend to learn to respect their bodies? What will they teach their children about committed love and the joy, struggle, pleasure, and profit of raising children with a faithful partner?

Epstein-phobia is being fuelled not by any sincere disapproval of his orgies but by voyeurism about how many celebrities (of course not the Emperor!) can be caught with their pants down. If ever we needed a signal of an empire in decline.

Are there lessons for us Jamaicans to learn? Underdevelopment is a moral as well as an economic default.

SELL-OUT?

Finally, for now. Jamaica will bring down Judas’s curse upon ourselves if our leaders sell out our Cuban sisters and brothers for 30 pieces of US silver.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.