Ronald Thwaites | Elected eunuchs

Last week, National Integrity Action hosted a presentation on the findings and recommendations of their recent study of how effectively the Jamaican Legislature exercises oversight over the Executive. Then there were reports of the committee at Gordon House thrashing around to develop a job description for members of parliament. Listening set off a flood of memories.

WANTED: A SOCIAL SECURITY NET

Like about Doris, a stomach cancer sufferer on Hanover St. who called her MP after midnight to beg for money to buy the pain killer which the Drug-Serv pharmacy did not stock. Arriving with the cash, the groans of her death-throes breached the night silence. Then there was the issue of affording the funeral. And after that, how would the three grandchildren she had been caring, be maintained? Where was the money for all those things to come from in time, or at all?

During my four-term tenure there were hundreds of other such instances where the elected representative was the only person to whom desperate people could turn. And, ashamed to admit, there were scores of other occasions of genuine need when, exhausted of funds and emotional energy, I did not respond.

Talk about living in one’s constituency? What do you do when the school children line up at your office gate, mouth-corners white and dry, seeking a breakfast money before classes? Which government agency do you send them to? Or the elderly and indigent? Tell them to eat cake? Or apply to PATH, go to Father Ho Lung or Mother Teresa?

EMPTY PROMISES

Then there were the tours and meetings arranged with ministers to wheedle for some improvement - repairing a road, fixing a school, quelling a violent outbreak, encouraging small business, acquiring indigent houses or, most often of all, relieving fire victims. Most to no avail - despite best intentions and palpable need. Food for the Poor proved quicker responder.

Was all this the intended job of a member of parliament in our distorted version of the Westminster model? Interfacing with the public bureaucracy to get things done involves begging favours, explaining six times, waiting and .... waiting. And you better believe that kisses go by favour. If you are in Opposition, you and your people are “salt”.

BY DEFAULT

Thank God for Bruce Golding who instituted the much-maligned Constituency Development Fund. But that has its own limits and bureaucracy. When the likes of Doris needed immediate relief, you used your own money until there was none left. The default position is to get hard of heart; to be “missing in action”- limiting the time of exposure to the very people you want to be with or to suck up to some “boops” who will finance constituency needs - at a price.

Now, with the much bigger money MPs get, ask any of them: it only means the requests and demands are greater and more insistent. Jamaica has no social security system equal to the needs of the increasing number of poor. The elected representative is held responsible for everything; has more dash but less power to get things done than the bureaucrat in any State department.

Ask any of them about the road rehabilitation programme which has been promised months ago, thereby raising immediate expectations among constituents, but is yet to be implemented.

And you can’t complain too loudly either because, if you are a government member, you will be considered disloyal and subtly victimised, while if your party is in Opposition, you are presumed to be more presumptions and impertinent than Oliver Twist.

MAKING GOOD LAWS?

Then come to Gordon House on Tuesday afternoon and participate in the exercise of “passing just laws for the public weal”. The agenda is entirely determined by the House Leader and the capacity to intervene meaningfully is subject to a usually partisan Speaker who takes her cue from the said House Leader. Oh for a Speaker like the independent-minded and super-calm Michael Peart!

During my time, I asked scores of questions and introduced many more private members motions than anyone else - mostly to no avail. It makes me wince when I hear one of these latter-day Speakers proclaim their fidelity to the standing orders which are breached flagrantly by them at every sitting.

My questions and motions were never rejected for irrelevance (though Pearnel sometimes tried to edit them to make the government not look so bad), but most fell off the order paper at the end of a term, never given a chance to be debated.

My zeal was considered a nuisance. Most other members never bothered to try. The standing orders provide for a Thursday sitting to accommodate private members business. But when has that ever been implemented and which quorum is going to turn up on that day of the week anyway?

THE NIA REVIEW

No wonder Jeanette Calder at JAMP could record 294 reports tabled by state agencies spending tens of billions of the dollars extracted from persons like Doris, but never examined except in one degge-degge committee meeting over the period. This is bald truth which should outrage everyone. There is no effective oversight of public expenditure by the legislature. No wonder people make it a virtue to evade taxes.

In fact both Trevor Munroe and JAMP were much too mild in their critique of parliamentary oversight. I fought for the re-establishment of the Public Administration & Appropriations Committee at the turn of the century. This has proved such an embarrassment to a slack government that it is proposed that this Committee should be restricted to consider only to those matters referred to it by the whole House.

The Public Accounts Committee only works in arrears and only when provoked by some auditor-general’s report. And, after all the publicity, what becomes of their recommendations? The Standing Finance Committee is scandalously useless. Any searching questions of budget items are routinely shouted down. Members show little or no interest in interrogating the efficiency of the trillion and more dollars presented in the big yellow book by the Finance Ministry.

So NIA and JAMP may have reason to balance their inventory of deficiencies with their acknowledgement of slight successes. It could be even worse. Their effort is highly commendable. Without their kind of oversight, arrogance, recklessness and corruption would prevail unchecked.

WEAK COMMITTEE STRUCTURE

Then there were the interminable hours spent in sessional committees. Meetings are irregular because facilities and staff are said to be limited. This government has neutered committees into near extinction by their fear of Opposition chairpersons. The public and interest groups are heard, reports are written, most of which never influence policy or legislation. A cruel example is my fruitless effort over two decades to require the names of all fathers to be recorded on their children’s birth certificates.

IS IT WORTH IT?

Each candidate in the upcoming elections must ask themselves if the effort at representation is worth it. Those who conclude that it is must resolve to radically change the capacities and accountability of the present order. Our governance arrangements are broken; full of form and too empty of substance. Autocracy thrives. The present system produces elected eunuchs.

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.