Editorial | Find a better way to recognise the service of others

Yesterday, a gaggle of former, mostly retired, foreign service officers were hosted by Sheila Monteith at the new, high-rise Hugh Lawson Shearer Building on the Kingston waterfront, just east of the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ). It is the home of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, where Ms Monteith is the top civil servant – the permanent secretary.

Whether Ms Monteith acted on her own or on the suggestion or instruction of the foreign affairs and foreign trade minister, Kamina Johnson Smith, this newspaper appreciates the initiative for several reasons. First, we choose to interpret the gesture not only merely as intending to show off the foreign ministry’s new, shiny, state-of-the-art offices. Rather, we see it as an implicit recognition of the service of others. Or, put another way, it is Ms Monteith’s way of asserting the continuity of government and the role, in the Westminster form, of the permanent, non-partisan civil service that executes policy without alignment to politicians. Loyalty is to the Government at large, which transcends political party or the office holder of the day.

In a way, the Hugh Lawson Shearer Building is a product of that continuity. It was a gift from China, offered during Bruce Golding’s 2007-2011 administration and completed in 2021. However, it was the Michael Manley administration, nine months after it came to office in 1972, that established diplomatic relations with China. The US had only just normalised its own engagement with Beijing. Many developing countries were still tentative.

The tour of the building by the former foreign service officers also provides an opportunity to reflect on how Jamaica acknowledges and honours the work of public officials, and its tendency to name public buildings and other facilities and infrastructure in honour of politicians. The recognition of outstanding non-political public officers are few and far between.

Few people, this newspaper believes, would be seriously offended by the foreign ministry building being named for Mr Shearer, Jamaica’s prime minister from 1967 to 1972 and foreign minister under Edward Seaga in the 1980s. This was at a time when the Government was bringing Jamaica’s foreign policy back to close alignment with America’s after Kingston’s hectic period on the global stage over the previous decade, when Mr Manley emerged as major spokesman for the concerns on the Global South and P.J. Patterson was his foreign minister. Indeed, either Mr Manley or Mr Patterson – whose credit includes critical roles in the creation of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries and the ACP’s early economic support and trade pacts with the European Union, could, with merit, have had his name on the building.

Yet, many diplomats who served with distinction could also easily be in contention. Naming people in these circumstances can be invidious, when the potential list is so long and worthy. Nonetheless, it is surprising that there is no public institution in the memory of someone like, say, Sir Edgerton Richardson, a former financial secretary, who was Jamaica’s first permanent representative of the United Nations (UN) in New York after the island’s Independence in 1962. He also served as ambassador to the United States and Mexico, and had a second stint at the UN in 1981. Or Frank Francis, the outstanding foreign service officer, who was permanent secretary in the 1970s into the early 1980s.

OUTSTANDING WORK OF JOHNSON, HILL

Neither is there much, if anything, by which the country recalls the outstanding work of Keith Johnson, who was head of Jamaica’s UN mission between 1967 and 1973, and who was accredited to several countries in Europe and the Middle East and had a long stint as ambassador to the United States. Or Don Mills, Mr Johnson’s successor in New York, who developed a stellar reputation in the UN and other global systems, many of which called on his expertise long after his retirement. One of Mr Mills’ juniors at the UN was Douglas Saunders, the current Cabinet secretary, who also served as permanent secretary in the foreign ministry. Mr Saunders was noted in Brussels for his skills in ACF-EU negotiations.

At the United Nations’ specialised agencies in Geneva, Anthony Hill, years into retirement, is still celebrated for his elephantine grasp of the issues and the skill with which he defended Jamaica’s and developing countries’ interests in negotiations at the GATT, and in the talks for its successor, the World Trade Organization. Indeed, many of the issues he promoted then remain on the agenda of developing countries today.

The absence of acknowledgement of outstanding public officials and the default to celebrating political leadership is not unique to the foreign service officers. Across the public service, and elsewhere, many officials with stellar achievements are unrecognised. How, for instance, is Horace Barber celebrated? It is not our suggestion, however, that it is only public-sector officials who should be so honoured. People in a wide range of endeavours deserve being celebrated, too.

The Government, for the areas where it has control, must develop a better process, involving a wider range of stakeholders, for these exercises, rather than the default to politicians. In the meantime, perhaps Ms Monteith might imprint the names of some of the former foreign service stalwarts on some of the doors in her new building.