Ronald Thwaites | Are they civil and do they serve?

Senator Sherene Golding Campbell gets it. Her piece titled ‘The personal responsibility revolution needed in the public service’ was brave enough to confront a major cramp of governance and productivity – the inability of every government to get done what has been promised and paid for by the Jamaican people. Her analysis is spot on.

Ask any minister privately, past or present and, if you promise not to quote them because that will only unleash bad-mindedness and retribution, and they will tell you of their frustration, the in-bred torpor of a public service more vested in its own perpetuation than stirred with a verve to achieve national goals.

Of course this critique is not true of everybody – and that’s the hope. There are thousands of public servants, in the past and now who sacrificially embody the national cause and carry the characteristics of personal responsibility more than some of us elected apparatchiks.

I remember benefiting from a permanent secretary who regularly worked through the night, another who bestowed her wise courage by telling me “No” when my judgement was poor and a third who with unmatched brilliance served until partisan hacks intervened.

But their type is not the norm and their own effectiveness was often suffocated by the love bush of effete regulation and unmotivated staff at lower levels. So the capital budget doesn’t get spent, project delays and over-runs are routine, important standards like punctuality, observing working hours and already too generous leave entitlements and empathy towards the public, capsize efficiency.

International funding sources cost in avoidable delays, pay-offs and slow decisions to the money we must pay them back.

SYSTEMATIC INEFFICIENCY

Regrettably, Sherene’s remedies won’t work. They are too soft. Once “appointed”, public servants are virtually untouchable. Disciplinary proceedings are rare and weak. Promotion is still heavily weighted by considerations of seniority. Remuneration and efficiency are strangers to each other. Those who perform and those who don’t have the same fate on the 25th of each month. Tell me what benefit can come to the needy students of a school I know where 10-15 per cent of teachers are absent on any given day most often without excuse.

I remember how shocked the late Don Wehby was when told that there were no significant incentive arrangements in the education system for teachers based on performance and that transferability was not possible. “I could never run GraceKennedy like that” was his riposte. Indeed. But you see, Grace has shareholders to account to and if efficiency does not produce profit, even the CEO’s job will not be “permanent”.

How different when the taxpayers can be pick-pocketed and if resistant, criminalised, so that the public sector wage bill (scandalously and unforgettably led by you politicians!) can spiral as a percentage of GDP without any commensurate improvement in productivity.

Convince us, if you dare, that Parliament is functioning more efficiently since the 300 per cent pay rise. Where else is the “personal responsibility revolution” to start? If political leaders suffer no consequences for non-performance, why should public servants? Disgusted and disappointed, they watch leadership and react.

LOW TRUST

Senator Golding Campbell in her earnest and worthwhile piece notes what she judges to be the excellent focus of the prime minister and minister of finance on a “growth strategy and social and infrastructure investment”. Sadly, most Jamaicans from experience, don’t feel confident that much of that will really happen. Recognising that herself, she calls for a “cultural shift” towards personal as opposed to institutional responsibility among those who will make or break the promises of the Budget Debate.

The sad truth is that we have so fractured ourselves politically, that we instinctively don’t trust our leaders or ourselves and decline to cooperate. That self-inflicted predicament is being made worse by the pretensions of this administration and their fretful tribe that they embody the nation’s dream and can broker the massive, spiritual, behavioural and systemic changes which are required for us to survive the unprecedented double perils of losing half of GDP in Melissa and now Trump-inspired economic pop-down .

The PNP must ask itself and then tell the public how different it would be when it forms government.

The Civil Service Orders and the Education Code require complete overhaul as part of any cultural shift. The Official Secrets Act would have to go too. Which political administration thinks it can achieve even these first necessary steps by itself? That would be to court suicide.

To solve the problem of public service efficiency, we need to work towards consensus positions which most of us can identify as being conducive to individual and broad national advancement.

PRINCIPLED INDEPENDENCE

To this end, Mrs Malahoo Forte’s show of principled independence regarding the NaRRA Bill is to be commended. We had better beat down the perverse moral code whereby anyone who thinks independently is considered treacherous; all bipartisanship is betrayal, pragmatism is opportunism and compromise is a dirty word rather than a necessary and even noble act.

Marlene’s example if followed, would be revolutionary. There would be less room for divisiveness to be exploited; less chance for Esaus in Jacob’s clothing to fool us.

And more likely to fire up the public service and all of us with what Pope Leo calls “the fearless conscience of humanity”.

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.