Editorial | Making MPs accountable

The urgency with which Prime Minister Andrew Holness rustled up draft descriptions for MPs after the public backlash against the big salary hikes to parliamentarians hasn’t been matched by the pace with which his ideas are being put to formal review and public scrutiny.

When he tabled the draft job descriptions in the House 12 days ago, the prime minister promised that the green paper would be deliberated on by a joint select committee of Parliament, which, presumably, will invite input from the public. That committee hasn’t yet been appointed. The prime minister and Parliament must act with urgency. Dithering will only deepen the cynicism most Jamaicans have towards politics and politicians, thus worsening the trust deficit between citizens and the institutions of governance.

Indeed, it is over seven years since Mr Holness first promised – during his party’s campaign for, and after it won, the 2016 general election – to provide job descriptions for his ministers. And it is more than three decades since the Stone Committee, in 1991, sketched a road map for arresting constituents’ plummeting trust in their MPs, and workable mechanisms, including recall, with which to hold them accountable.

In other words, between the comprehensive Stone document, and offerings in the early 2000s report by a committee chaired by Oliver Clarke, the work of the joint select committee can proceed with pace. There is no need to believe that the wheel is in need of reinvention.

STONE COMMITTEE

Essentially, the Stone Committee, which was chaired by the late The University of the West Indies academic, Carl Stone, and Mr Holness’ green paper agree on the roles of MP. Primarily, they are to help make laws and provide oversight of the executive, and critically, pursue and promote the interests of their constituencies.

This newspaper, however, especially embraces Stone’s proposals for promoting constituency interests in a manner that lessens political partisanship, while enhancing accountability. That possibility of transparency is even greater now with the emergence of new communication technologies, some of which weren’t even thought of during Stone’s time.

One of Stone’s very practical suggestions for enhancing citizens’ engagement is for parliamentarians to have constituency offices – separate and distinct from their party, political offices – where they conduct constituency business. This idea is so simple and sensible that it is surprising that it isn’t universally used. For in Jamaica’s often tribal and colour-coded political environment, some constituents who need the services of their representatives, or otherwise conduct non-partisan business, won’t, under any circumstance, enter an MP’s party office. Yet, for the most part, it is the party office that prevails.

Stone also proposed the establishment of non-partisan constituency councils (which would be different from a party’s constituency political organisation) composed of representatives of community organisations. The jobs of these councils would be to work with MPs in crafting constituency development plans, advocating for specific projects and drafting budgets. Significantly, a variation of this idea found its way in the 2016 Local Governance Act, which mandates municipal authorities to establish parish development committees, charged with undertaking similar functions for parishes. Few of these committees, even if established, are robust because there are no monitoring to ensure that they are not sidelined by municipal authorities.

In addition to its overarching obligation to help the MP with planning, Stone’s proposed councils would receive reports on parliamentarians’ overall management, organise meetings for the representative to report on his or her stewardship and act as a clearing house/appeal body for citizens’ complaints against the MP.

OFTEN FAIL

Good ideas, however, often fail in the absence of accountability. Which is why we support Stone’s proposal for the right to recall non-performing MPs, but with the appropriate guardrails to prevent the arrangement’s frivolous, irresponsible or opportunistic use by political partisans.

Among these safeguards would be a requirement that recall petitions have to be signed by at least 51 per cent of a constituency’s registered voters and that the impugned MP have the right of appeal to the constituency council. The petition would only go forward if the council agreed it was justified.

The grounds for initiating a recall would be narrow, limited to situations such as an MP breaking the parliamentarians’ code of conduct, failing to perform specific duties, or having brought the office of MP into disrepute. These offences are anticipated in the restructured impeachment bill that the opposition leader, Mark Golding, retabled in Parliament last year. Giving effect to this proposal would require constitutional amendments, but doing that would be relatively easy since the affected clauses aren’t deeply entrenched.

Further, the idea of recall or impeachment isn’t legislatively novel to Jamaica. The Local Governance Act allows for it in the case of the directly elected mayors of city municipalities, of which Portmore, St Catherine, is the only one.

If 25 per cent of Portmore’s voters signed a recall petition against its mayor, or two-thirds of the municipality’s sitting councillors voted for it, the local government minister could open an investigation into the mayor’s conduct. If it is deemed that a case was made out, the national parliament would then vote on the mayor’s impeachment.

In Stone’s time, 72 per cent of Jamaicans supported recall. We would be surprised if support isn’t stronger now. And as the Stone report said, giving voters the right to recall MPs, albeit with strong protections against abuse, “would have a major impact in restoring the public’s sense of control over the politician”.