Benchwarmers all? Lawmakers as quick as snails

Martin Henry, Contributor

Legislation is the business of the legislature. Governor General Sir Patrick Allen, speaking for the Government in the Throne Speech (not yet the People's Speech) at the opening of the new parliamentary year, last Thursday spoke glowingly of the 25 bills which were passed of the 33 tabled in the last parliamentary year. What His Excellency didn't get around to mentioning was that 13 of the 25 were merely amendments to existing laws.

Included among the amended laws was the NHT Act, which was amended with lightning speed at the very end of the legislative year to allow the Government to siphon off $45.6 billion from the NHT over the next four years without having to contend with legal challenges.

Meanwhile, a well-armed Opposition Senator
Arthur Williams has fired broadsides in the Upper House against himself
and other legislators over the tardiness with which laws are enacted by
the Legislature. Williams, dissecting the decades since 1980, showered
fellow senators and the country via media with data
bullets.

Between 1980 and 1989, Parliament passed 214
bills, averaging 21 per year. During the following decade, 1990-1999,
269 bills were passed at the average rate of 27 per year. Between 2000
and 2009, 259 laws were made, averaging 26 per year. In the first three
years of the current decade, only 58 bills were passed, at the
lower-than-ever average rate of a mere 19 per year. So I guess the GG
has a little point to crow on behalf of the Government about the rise of
the number last year.

Senator Williams continued his
barrage. The legislative programme, over the nine years between 2003 and
2012, totalled 1,334 bills, or an average of 148 pieces of legislation
before Parliament each year. But only 224 bills, an average of 25 per
year, have been actually passed. "What this means," the senator fired,
"is that, as a country, we are only passing 17 per cent of the
legislation on Government's annual legislation programme." Imagine a
business, or even a public service agency of Government (not the
courts!), with this kind of level of output!

Senator
Mark Golding, who is in charge of both the courts and the legislative
agenda of the Cabinet, was complaining on TVJ's 'All Angles' last
Wednesday night that Senator Williams was double-counting. I pointed out
then, and I point out again now, that Senator William's arithmetic
'error' serves the very useful purpose of underscoring the heavy
rollover of bills from one parliamentary year to the next and the
ridiculously low and slow rate at which the legislature deals with the
nation's lawmaking business.

Legislative burden should
increase

Williams warned about the obvious - that
Government's legislative burden can only increase in the future as the
country meets new challenges and situations, including regional and
international obligations. We saw last legislative year, in its dying
moments, for example, the rush to push through the Parliament the
lottery scam bill in response to the external pressures of foreign
affairs.

The legislative burden could be even greater
if the recommendation made in these pages by guest columnist Matondo
Mukulu, and supported by me, for a Law Commission to be established to
review the country's laws and make recommendations for legislative
change were adopted. In the last parliamentary year, for example, the
obeah law was amended and the flogging and whipping law was
abolished.

Where Senators Williams and Golding were in
happy accord was on the point that, as things now stand, the Government
is not equipped, staffed, or resourced for any greater output of
legislation. Williams laid out the multi-steps of the legislation
process and targeted the incapacity of the Government to deliver more on
those steps. Three lawyers in the Constitutional and Legislative
Affairs Division of the Attorney General's Department, where at least 10
are needed, for example. Six out of 10 posts (and 10 is probably much
too low in the first instance) filled in the Legal Reform Department of
Senator Golding's Ministry of Justice.

Senator
Williams says the two main problems holding down better legislative
performance are the incapacity of the Government for policy development
(by which he means resource capacity), and the incapacity in legislative
drafting. I would add a third, which parliamentarians may not wish to
have attached: too few sittings of both chambers of
Parliament.

The Throne Speech cheerily advised - again
- that, "The Government will pursue an active legislative agenda and
towards this end is moving to strengthen the Office of the Parliamentary
Counsel in keeping with a review undertaken by the Cabinet Office."
We've been there. Let's see.

The country will have to
pay for good governance if we want good
governance.

But the minds of the Jamaican public have
been thoroughly poisoned against investing in governance. And those
charged with governance coming to power through competitive electoral
politics are terrified of upsetting 'the people'. The media have played a
not-insignificant role in orchestrating this state of
affairs.

I am a strong advocate of more for Government
to get governing done better. But I am painfully aware that this is a
tiny minority position. When I wrote 'In support of Parliament' a few
months ago, a blogger retorted, "Looks like only two idlers bothered to
read Henry's column!!!"

I was advocating a new
Parliament building, adequate staffing, and support services. One of
those 'idlers' wrote, "You seemed to have gone off the cliff today! You
are advocating grand buildings for our parliament and parish councils
instead of down-sizing. Do you not realise that we are broke and that
the politicians are responsible for this? By all means maintain the ones
we have."

Another 'idler' with more time for a longer
lecture wrote: "This article is nothing more than an apologia for the
luxury vehicle fiasco. It is quite disingenuous in its premise, because
it seeks to rationalise the decades upon decades of malfeasance and
misrule, by blaming the Jamaican people for their reluctance to allow
politicians to indulge their taste in creature comforts, and luxuries.
Putting a pack of dunces in a magnificently designed air-conditioned
edifice provides no guarantee of good governance. If these ministers
were truly interested in information and analysis, they would do it
themselves. After all, they have air-conditioned luxury vehicles which
they can drive to the UWI library to discover facts for themselves. Who
knows - in the process of doing this they may yet learn something about
the nation which they purport to govern."

No better
governance

These are the voices of the majority. And
we are not likely to get better governance any time soon, in so far as
this depends on providing more resources for better capacity within
Government.

But Parliament can, and should, sit more
often to clear more bills that actually meander through the drafting
process and appear before them. Our Parliament sits for under 50 times
per year, on average 49 times a year in the five-year period 2004-2005
to 2008-2009. We have this data from UWI professor of government, Trevor
Munroe, on numbers of sittings of Parliament for some other
Commonwealth
countries:

• Country 2006
  2007

• Australia 68
  68
• Canada 114 115
• Ghana 140
  140
• India 74 74
• Kenya 86
  86
• New Zealand 86 91
• UK 143
  151

Senator Arthur Williams, in
concluding his impassioned plea for better support for the legislature
and the legislative process, advised the country, "It is not in respect
of everything that we can say, 'the country cannot afford it.' There are
some things that we must afford, and, and if we afford them now, it
will redound to the benefit of Jamaica in the
future."

We have another Budget driven by debt
management and economic growth, but if the country is to have the peace,
order and good government, which everyone desires, there is no question
that we will have to invest more heavily in an effective legislative
process as well, and in the enforcement of the laws and in the delivery
of justice. That is, in the most fundamental public-interest reasons for
having government, even at the expense of sectoral economic and social
demands.

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