Roving in the JEEP

Martin Henry, Contributor

I'm roving today - in the JEEP - and will make a number of pit stops here and there, some longer than others.

In the course of a couple of weeks, this newspaper has directed a number of missives to the Minister of Finance Dr Peter Phillips: 'Dr Phillips must not yield' (February 26), 'Dr Phillips' tough battle' (February 28), 'Good start but tough road for Dr Phillips' (February 10).

Must Peter bear the cross alone, and all the rest go free? Jamaica's second and shortest-serving prime minister, Sir Donald Sangster, who was also finance minister in Bustamante's and his own government, was fond of retreating to the Jamaica Defence Force camp at Newcastle to craft the national Budget in privacy and peace. In fact, it was there at work that he suffered the brain haemorrhage that took his life.

Westminster parliamentary democracy and the Jamaican Constitution have somewhat different views about the budget process. The Parliament has a Standing Finance Committee made up of the entire House of Representatives. Particularly at a time of financial crisis, such as Jamaica faces now, all of the people's representatives should be called upon to engage as fully as is reasonably possible the critical issues of public finance, public policy and governance. Indeed, we might not have got into this royal mess of debt without growth if the collective wisdom and independent judgement of the people's representatives had been consistently called upon in governance decision-making in the Parliament.

We see the rich possibilities of MPs helping to push fiscal prudence in the reasonable proposition of renegade member Everald Warmington for shutting down the Office of the Political Ombudsman which, in his view, is no longer necessary and does not deliver value for money.

If MPs had fair opportunity to haggle over priorities, cuts, and efficiencies within the fiscal constraints facing the nation, not only are we likely to get better results, especially if the views of opposition members are respectfully considered, but there would be 63 parliamentary ambassadors to sell the austerity programme to their own constituents not as Phillips' programme but as a national programme.

As talk-show host-turned-Minister of Education Ronald Thwaites has frequently complained in the past, technocrats have more say in the Budget process than do the people's elected representatives. With a month to go before the tabling of next fiscal year's Budget, there is some redemption time.

Hopefully, Dr Phillips, who as minister of national security had a difficulty in trusting his Cabinet colleagues with knowledge of MOUs entered into with the government of the United States, will not be unduly challenged by making the Standing Finance Committee really work as the nation wrestles with one of its two biggest problems.

ambitious crime plan

That other major national concern, crime, has been showing some upsurge this year. Shortly after unveiling his anti-crime plan, which ambitiously wants to see the murder rate fall from 62 per 100,000 to 12 per 100,000 over the next five years, a woman in Montego Bay, while liking much of what Minister Peter Bunting was doing, advised him not to trouble the lotto scammers "because a lot of people benefiting from that".

The minister drew the wrong lesson from the encounter, or at least a lesson of distant secondary importance. While pointing out that 40 per cent of the murders in St. James are related to the lotto scam, Bunting said, the woman's advice "brought home to me that the average person may not be making the connection between the activities of the scammers and the violent crimes that we see in Montego Bay".

That is condescending naïveté on the part of the minister. His adviser, in all probability, could give him names of killers and the killed, with some big justification of why dem fi dead.

The embedding of crime and gangsterism and violence in communities (most of which are political enclaves) as a normalised way of life, making those communities virtually unpoliceable, is the real lesson to the Bunting Anti-Crime Plan, which I too like a lot.

The "tyranny of the status quo" must be broken by rooting gangs out of communities, blocking their regrouping or migration, normalising law and order in these dysfunctional spaces, which includes swift and sure delivery of justice; sucking the benefits and profitability out of crime; and creating alternatives to crime.

The Bunting plan covers a lot of that ground but leaves many questions about its operationalisation which can't simply be passed to the police commissioner. If the police, for example, are to "dominate the streets" as an anti-gang strategy, where are the numbers to do so? The Jamaica Constabulary Force has 8,000 officers with around another 2,000 in the Special Constabulary. One area cut in the last Supplementary Estimates was the budget line for police training. The explanation was that a facility had been closed so the money could be shifted. So how and when are we going to have more boots on the ground to dominate the streets?

These are the kinds of issues a living Parliament should be wrestling with and prioritising solutions. The most fundamental function of government is the securing of citizens' lives and property. In my view, resources should be preferentially shifted away from such things as subsidising the tourism industry, universal free health care, which is covering those who can pay, and even from some levels of education, and shifted into national security reflected in greater numbers, better pay and more working resources.

And how exactly does the minister plan to "depoliticise gangs".

Portia Simpson Miller, opposition leader, had called, more than once, for a full parliamentary debate on crime. As prime minister, she is now in the best position to make it happen.

Talking taxation

The Private Sector Working Group (PSWG) presented its tax-reform proposals in a media briefing last Tuesday. A couple of member organisations didn't sign because their special interest favoured status as beneficiaries of waivers in the current tax regime was threatened. I am not now commenting on the specifics of the PSWG proposals, which have drawn both strong opposition and strong support.

Quite a bit of the opposition is driven by blind anti-business and pro-poor sentiment and the dangerous zero-sum mythical view that the prosperity of (big) business must mean the impoverishment of the (little) people.

Tax reform should be driven by the rudimentary principles behind the ideal tax system: low rates, a broad and fine net, equitable sharing of the burden, no exemptions, simplicity, certainty, efficiency in collection.

I am in favour of shifting taxation from income to consumption and to property ownership, ideally with zero taxes on income, which is a reality in a few jurisdictions, and a universal low general consumption tax covering every item of goods and services. Ideally, all waivers should go. Welfare benefits should be targeted to needy individuals. Citizens should be asked to pay cost-recovery fees for every government service that can be so treated.

Again, tax reform, with its huge impact on economy and governance, is something that all of the people's representatives should be wrapping their minds around in the Parliament.

Contorted logic on Manley

February 29 marked the 40th anniversary of Michael Manley's ascension to the prime ministership. The cheerleaders are having a field day piling on the praise, some delivering incredible contortions of logic. Motty is dead, and the other critics, perhaps further intimidated by the fact of Manley's People's National Party (PNP) back in power, have lapped their tails and fled.

One cheerleader and logician wrote the following contortion: "Michael Manley was one of the most visionary political leaders the world has ever seen. His political strategy and tactics were inept, clumsy and proved costly to his transformational project. He badly underestimated the virulence of the response of the local and international ruling classes and paid dearly for it. But no Jamaican political leader has ever exceeded him in vision, intellect and breadth." One would have thought that the purpose of having vision and intellect is to see ahead and to sensibly act accordingly.

By reach and impact, Michael Manley, with his very human feet of clay, was a truly great Jamaican with international standing in the league of Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley. With the passage of time, more objective assessments of the Manley legacy can and will be made. But I have long felt and repeatedly expressed the view that, whatever their positive contributions might be, the years of bitter rivalry and the 'war of attrition' between the Manley-led PNP and Edward Seaga-led Jamaica Labour Party is the principal reason for the poor state of the country's economy, social order, and governance. That great 'what if' question then arises: What if either man had not risen to the top of his party and had to face the other?

Despite the reckless apologists, even Manley's party came to acknowledge that democratic socialism had not and could not deliver on its promises and was bad for the country's and the party's future. The party changed course for winning the 1989 general election without abandoning its proud and rich social conscience.

As I wind down the roving, the Office of the Contractor General (OCG) has served notice that it intends to monitor the Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme (JEEP). "The Office of the Contractor General (OCG), in the exercise of its powers under the contractor general", its statement to the press said, "has served formal notice upon the Government of Jamaica that it will be comprehensively monitoring the award and execution of all contracts which will be administered under the umbrella of the JEEP.

"... The OCG has ... requisitioned the Government to provide to it, by no later than March 8, 2012, a broad range of preliminary information which it will utilise to ensure probity, propriety, transparency, accountability and value for money in the award and implementation of the JEEP contracts."

Good. The JEEP can be useful but must satisfy the reasonable requirements of probity and not, in running, damage the national Treasury.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.