Portia: Leader of choice for good governance

Carl Marshall, Contributor

Good governance is not about age. It is the ability to steer the ship-of-state (our country) in uncharted waters to the destination of sustainable development. A nation is its people. Sustainable development, therefore, can only be achieved if there is continuous improvement in the quality of the people as productive agents and socially responsible individuals. Good governance must target prosperity for all the people, not just the few; it must uphold and demand ethical fitness at all levels and in all affairs; it must engender happiness (a belief that one can have aspirations and achieve them); and it must seek to foster pride in our nation. With good governance, our country can be turned around on a path of sustainable development within five years.

The JLP and governance

Bruce Golding has stepped down from the leadership of our country with indecent haste, giving one reason for such drastic action as the country's need for fresh ideas. In that statement, Golding implied that he, his Cabinet (including the present prime minister), and the entire Government in its four-year tenure failed to come up with any ideas that would improve governance and advance Jamaica's sustainable development. The Government has failed in every benchmark of good governance.

MOE policy - ASTEP

Sustainable development turns on quality education, and the Government has not been able to ensure its development. After four years as minister of education, Andrew Holness has told the country that schools are failing and the solution is to close them. Nothing would be more devastating to the growth and development of our country than what Holness proposes. Schools where children attend with their friends and classmates to learn must be the place where their learning is guaranteed. Creating layers of makeshift accommodation that segregate children as failures and break up social bonds, as an attempt to correct learning disabilities, is bad policy. The Alternative Secondary Transition Education Programme (ASTEP) created under the watch of Holness is one such policy. Even if some of the children become literate, they would all have suffered the social injustice of segregation which could have a devastating effect on their psyche. Bad educational policies cannot be scrapped; they tend to be self-perpetuating and produce in the affected psyche habits of antisocial behaviour and criminality. Our country could pay dearly for the bad social policies of the Government.

Holness and Jamaica's teachers

Teachers are prime movers of innovation in education. If they are recognised as such by the Government and given quality leadership, an education system that is conducive to learning, and appropriate education-delivery incentives, teachers will account for their stewardship. Holness has not been able to engage teachers in the pursuit of quality education delivery and management. He has been at loggerheads with the teachers for almost as long as he has been minister of education.

Holness has a serious weakness - he is not given to finding it within himself to do the obviously right thing, as was demonstrated by the impasse between himself and the teachers, which lasted for many months and which crippled the smooth functioning of many schools. Golding, with much disgust that the issue should have arisen and had been allowed to become a drawn-out impasse, heeded an appeal by the teachers for his intervention. Golding resolved the matter in minutes.

The govt and the JDX and JDIP

Holness has said that he is for continuity, the unbroken succession from Golding to himself on matters of policy, and so will not change course, although most Jamaicans feel that our country is going in the wrong direction. At the heart of the problem are the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) (the flagship programme indicating Government's ability to govern) that was conceived in deception and the Jamaica Develop-ment Infrastructure Programme (JDIP), for which the government assumed implementation responsibilities.

In constructing the JDX, the Government appropriated investment in US$ government bonds without giving bondholders an option. By a sleight of hand, the Government commandeered the hard-earned savings of many Jamaicans, including some of the most economically vulnerable (pensioners and small savers) until 2016. Many are in dire straits and could lose their investment. The Government could have achieved its objective without breaking the law and deceiving the people.

The JDIP is facilitated by a loan from the Chinese government to the people of Jamaica, and as a condition of the loan, its implementation should be subject to the scrutiny of Parliament to ensure equity and fairness. This was not done and now billions of dollars cannot be accounted for. A racket has been perpetrated against the people of Jamaica, and the finance minister, the former minister of transport and works and the former leader of government business, now prime minister, must answer the question: Why was the JDIP not made subject to parliamentary scrutiny? In both the JDX and the JDIP, Government's behavior has been morally reprehensible.

PNP as the alternative

Long before Golding stepped down from the leadership of the country, Portia Simpson Miller had formed the view that the country needed enlightened ideas and a more robust and ethical approach to governance. In 2009, Simpson Miller engaged the collective wisdom of the leadership of the People's National Party (PNP) and some members of civil society in the search for a structure of governance that would fix the new ideas of policies, programmes and projects of the next PNP government on the achievement of sustainable development. The progressive philosophy of the PNP (to improve the condition of life for the majority of the people, beginning with the poorest) was to guide the deliberations.

The approach to governance will focus on the optimal mix of policies, programmes and projects that will drive the continued improvement of physical and social infrastructure, growth of business enterprises, development of quality education, strengthening of communities and improvement in the quality of the people as productive agents and socially responsible individuals. The approach will turn on a comprehensive human resource development objective. The 'Progressive Agenda' is the framework document of the plan of action.

Carl Marshall is former speaker of the House and member of parliament representing the Peoples National Party.