Editorial | Oversight and the Speaker

Most of the recommendations by National Integrity Action (NIA) to improve Parliament’s oversight of Jamaica’s political Executive are not new.

Capping the number of members of parliament (MPs) the prime minister can appoint to the Executive has been on the agenda for decades. And after the 2020 election, there were outcries over the Holness administration’s decision to end what most people thought was the settled system of having opposition legislators chair all but a handful of Parliament’s sessional committees. This newspaper, as do others, not infrequently, complains of how private members’ motions and bills, especially those by the Opposition, mostly get a one-way ticket to legislative purgatory. Little, however, ever changes.

Fundamentally, the problem, as NIA, a good governance NGO, pointed out last week, is the “fusion of power” between the Legislature and the Executive. The same members of parliament who are supposed to provide oversight of the Executive are also members of the Cabinet, which, by the Constitution, is “the principal instrument of policy”. Or, they aspire to be.

“Thus, fusion undermines the principle of separation of powers and thereby weakens the oversight capacity of Parliament,” explained Trevor Munroe, the NIA’s former head – and now a director – in outlining the body’s findings of a review of the operation of the Legislature. Oversight, therefore, was substantially less effective than it can, or should, be.

“Obviously, a clear separation of the Executive and the Legislature, where there are no parliamentarians in the Executive, challenges the basic defining properties of the parliamentary system,” Professor Munroe said.

A SENSIBLE SUGGESTION

It’s a political arrangement of that sort for which this newspaper has sympathy and believes ought to be seriously explored as a part of the current review of Jamaica’s Constitution.

Indeed, the idea was once robustly promoted by Bruce Golding, Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ predecessor as leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), as part of an administrative set-up that included an executive president, rather than a largely ceremonial one, on which there is political consensus.

But given the seeming lack of appetite for this deeper, and more radical, overhaul of the Constitution, we support the NIA’s reprise of the idea of limiting the number of MPs who can join the Cabinet or the lower tiers of the administration.

The Constitution says that the Cabinet should have no fewer than 11 members, at least two, and up to four, of whom can be appointed from the Senate – a quota that is now at its maximum.

Indeed, Mr Holness’ Cabinet has 19 members, 15 of whom are from the Lower House, accounting for a third of the governing party’s MPs. When another seven junior ministers are added to the slate, that puts 22, or 45 per cent, of the Government’s 49 members of the House in the Executive.

In keeping with Jamaica’s political/parliamentary culture of not questioning one’s tribe, and for fear that it might dim their prospects of promotion, those who remain on the backbenches, in common with the colleagues of the past, are not given to robustly interrogating government policies or actions.

In this regard, NIA’s suggestion – where their numbers make it feasible – of a return to Opposition chairmanship of all the sessional select committees, which have oversight of ministries, departments and agencies, is sensible. As is obvious from two committees (Public Accounts and Public Administration and Appropriations) that are still in the hands of the Opposition, they are the ones most likely to bring transparency – even when attempts are made to frustrate their work.

ADVANCING ACCOUNTABILITY

Bruce Golding was right that the Opposition may seek to use their chairmanship of parliamentary committees to embarrass the Government. But as he noted, that is the “cut and thrust of democracy” and part of holding those who hold power accountable. Governments should therefore do nothing for which they can be embarrassed.

We agree, too, that the Parliament’s rules should be changed to set specific times for the debate of private members’ bills and motions, and for there to be stricter observance of the Standing Orders with respect to ministers answering questions, which in Jamaica are mostly posed by the Opposition.

Amending the Constitution to place a limit on the size of the Cabinet can be done relatively easily, requiring no special provisions but the vote of the majority of all the members of the House.

But nothing, or at best only little, will change in the absence of a strong political consensus. And given its big majority in Parliament, the explicit support of the Government.

Which, of course, doesn’t mean that Parliament can’t be more effective under the current arrangements. A fair and creative Speaker who resolutely protects the rights of the minority and who interprets the rules and wields her gavel in a manner that expands, rather than limits, effective oversight can make a difference. Which, unfortunately, was not the approach of the Speakers of the recent past.

In this regard, the recently elected Speaker, Juliet Holness, has an opportunity to advance accountability rather than, as she seemed to imply in her maiden remarks in the chair, an over-reliance on rigidities. One of her early tasks, if she is minded to be bold, should be to set the Standing Orders Committee, which she will chair, to work on advancing those changes to the rules suggested by NIA.