Editorial | Have partnership agreements delivered?

This newspaper embraces Jamaica’s continued efforts at forging broad-based consensus on developmental issues, such as with last week’s signing at the latest iteration of a national partnership agreement (NPA) between the Government, the political Opposition, the labour movement and civil society groups.

But even as we welcome this development and the mission established in the NPA for the four-year period up to 2026, the project plan is missing a potential critical component: an honest and robust review of how well prior partnership efforts have worked, what, if any, have been their shortcomings, and what is necessary to enhance their efficacy. In other words, a partnership arrangement of this type must be more than in form. It must deliver in substance.

This newspaper starts with the principle that elected governments have an obligation to lead. Ultimately, they own policy. And with their control of the state apparatus, it is governments, who are rightly held accountable for the efficiency, or lack thereof, with which programmes and projects are implemented – and the value they deliver to societies.

COLLABORATE

But implicit in national partnership agreements, and explicitly declared in this one, governments are not possessed of all good policy options. That’s why, especially in liberal democracies, they often collaborate with other stakeholders to arrive at the best ideas and build consensus around them.

Said the partnership agreement: “If the government is to successfully enable Jamaica to recover stronger (from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession of 2008) and do so is a sustained way, it cannot do so by itself, but most forge partnerships with key stakeholders such as the parliamentary opposition, private sector, trade unions, church and civil society.”

In this regard, the National Partnership Council (NPC), the agreement’s operational body, is intended to encourage the development of strategic priorities and to monitor their implementation in the context of the broad goals, which include economic growth, labour market reform, reduction of crime and corruption, and protection of the environment. It will also support the effort of other groups, such as the Crime Monitoring and Oversight Committee (CMOC).

Which brings us back to where we started – an evaluation of how well Jamaica has done thus far in the business of consensus and partnership building. This effort is not new, as the document makes clear. Indeed, the last formal NPA covered the period 2016-2020, suggesting an unfortunate two-year hiatus between the ‘conclusion’ of that arrangement and the current pact.

Indeed, even before the late 1990s success of Ireland’s social partnership agreement gave impetus to the concept in this region, Jamaica had made its own stabs at forging consensus on gritty social and economic issues. There was, for example, the ultimately failed mid-1990s attempt by P.J. Patterson’s administration, overseen by Paul Robertson, to forge a pact around wages and other economic issues between the government, the private sector, trade unions and other groups. In 1997, the same year the Irish signed their partnership agreement, the ACORN group, a civil society-led outfit, was established and has since then worked behind-the-scenes at advancing social dialogue. Put another way, formal social partnership agreements, with the framework of a national council, have, with relative consistency, been in operation in Jamaica for the better part of two decades.

CAN’T CLAIM SUCCESS

Before the economic bust brought on by the Great Recession of 2008, the Irish partnership agreement contributed to a long period of transformative economic growth and social stability, which, of course, was aided by the end of the “The Troubles” after the Good Friday Agreement. Jamaica, unfortunately, can’t claim Irish-like success from its social partnership agreements, except, maybe, for the implementation of the tough 2012 fiscal consolidation agreement with the International Monetary (IMF). But the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC), whose efforts helped to assure the administration’s adherence to the IMF programme, was largely driven by the wish of the island’s financial sector, having taken a second voluntary haircut on its government debt in three years, to ensure it was spared future default.

Understanding why the partnership process has not delivered as much as it appeared to promise, we believe, should be the first order of business for the NPC. We suggest this not because of a lack of belief in the process, but because, notwithstanding its limitations, we are invested in it – in the process of dialogue and discourse to solve difficult problems and building consensus around agreed solutions.

Indeed, among our concerns with past partnership arrangements was the absence of transparency that attended them. Jamaicans knew little of their objectives, expected deliverables, how they operated or accounted for their achievements. People were occasionally reminded of their existence when someone, usually the opposition party, complained that the process was either dormant or that their views were not being heard. That is untenable.

This agreement’s promise of greater transparency, with periodic public reporting on its work, is sensible. It’s one way of developing trust in the consensus builder, assuming that it is capable of delivering something of value.