Editorial | Portmore’s conundrum

This newspaper periodically reminds Jamaican governments of our dicta that what is worse than formulating bad policy is the actual implementation of that policy. Which the recent public spat between Prime Minister Andrew Holness and parliamentarian Fitz Jackson over the plan to declare Portmore Jamaica’s 15th parish suggests the administration is quite intent on doing.

There is no logic, at least none that is apparent, to change Portmore’s status from a city municipality to a parish. The move will gain it little and lose it more, including the right of Portmore’s residents to directly elect their mayor. That is an entitlement not enjoyed by the residents of the island’s 13 existing municipal corporations, although the chairman of each municipal council is styled as mayor of the parish’s capital town.

On the face of it, Mr Jackson’s public challenge of the prime minister this week may appear self-serving, concerned with preserving electoral votes in his St Catherine South parliamentary constituency.

More importantly, Mr Jackson’s timing was bad and the occasion wrong. He intruded upon what should have been a happy occasion for Shaniel Francis. She was receiving a home from the government to replace the one she was building on property she believed she owned, but was in fact government land illegally ‘sold’ by a conman. Ms Francis’ half-built house was demolished by the government.

NOT A FAN

While The Gleaner is not a fan of these public handing-over of homes and similar events – they present people’s straitened circumstances as political props – Mr Jackson should publicly apologise to Ms Francis for marring the occasion. For as Prime Minister Holness remarked, there is a time and a place for everything – almost.

But on the core issues he raised, Mr Jackson was correct. Most people no doubt share the MP’s concern over the insinuation by the government minister, Everard Warmington, that the establishment of Portmore as a parish, and the configuration of its boundaries, were intended to give the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) an electoral lock on the area. Based on the proposed new maps, bits are to be cut from Mr Jackson’s constituency. He sees gerrymandering.

It is not enough for the prime minister to say that areas to be removed from Mr Jackson’s constituency are uninhabited and to imply that the change won’t affect his votes. Things are not generally static.

But there are larger questions at play – not least the fact that the Government seems to have turned on its head the more than four decades-old consensus on how the country’s constituency boundaries are assigned, and generally, the resolution of election-related issues.

Constitutionally, drawing electoral boundaries is the responsibility of a standing parliamentary committee, whose recommendations go to the full legislature. In practice, that job is ceded to the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), whose recommendations are fully adopted by Parliament, with the boundaries committee as a conduit.

This has worked because the EOJ, with a majority of independent members, also has representatives from the two political parties. So, by the time its proposals reach Parliament they have been fully trashed out and agreements reached. It helps, too, that since its establishment in 1979 as the Electoral Advisory Committee, the ECJ’s independent members have been people of high integrity and that the commission has reformed a dodgy election system to one in which Jamaicans have confidence.

NOT CONSULTED

It is surprising, in the circumstance, that Mr Jackson could report that neither he nor anyone else in his party was consulted on the proposed boundaries, although the documents had been circulated by government officials. The implication is that the EC J wasn’t involved. This issue must be urgently clarified, given its potential to undermine the integrity of the ECJ.

On the core question of removing Portmore from St Catherine and setting it up as a stand-alone parish, no compelling case has been made for the move. A parliamentary committee that was established to review the decision produced an intellectually flaccid majority report, with sophomoric arguments about building markets, developing fire stations and reorganising police service in the area – all of which can be accomplished under Portmore’s current structure.

In fact, the Local Governance Act gives city municipalities almost equal powers that a parish-based municipal corporation, with the advantage that residents of city municipalities directly elect their mayors, who chair their councils. The chairmen of the corporation’s aren’t directly elected, but selected by the council.

In Portmore, residents who are dissatisfied with the mayor can instigate a review of his behaviour by 25 per cent of registered voters signing a petition calling on the local government minister to investigate the mayor. If that investigation substantiates the complaint, the national parliament can vote to remove the offending mayor.

There are systemic problems which inhibit the performance of Jamaica’s local authorities. But generally, they can do more than they achieve.

If the Portmore experiment hasn’t lived up to the expectations, it isn’t because it isn’t a parish. The parish-based governments have done no better. Rather, it is because it hasn’t had – except at the start when George Lee, the campaigner for its municipal status, was alive – good, visionary leadership. That ought to be the fulcrum of the Portmore debate.