Agenda for national renewal

Dr Peter D. Phillips, Contributor

(The following are excerpts of Dr Peter Phillips’ presentation in Gordon House)

On any normal day like today, the vast majority of the 1.1 million adult Jamaicans set about their daily chores in difficult conditions. Approximately 15 per cent of households subsist below the poverty line, i.e. they cannot secure the basic minimum of nutrients they need. Perhaps another 30 per cent are what we would call the working poor, subsisting just above the poverty line – meeting daily needs, but literally on the edge of survival.

Any unusual or unprogrammed expenditure precipitates a personal crisis. Back-to-school expenses, illness in the family, bad weather, house damage, fire – any event, threatens to push them across the poverty line.

Those in better circumstances – the so-called white-collar workers, civil servants, workers in finance and banking, and small-business people – still feel that their lives are in turmoil.

They, too, have felt the brunt of the economic decline – many have lost jobs; major enterprises in finance, distribution, manufacturing, etc, have had to downsize. Also, they, like the rest of the society, are confronted by the concerns about educational performance in schools, crime in schools; they are concerned about the quality and affordability of health care; and they, like the rest of the society, are paralysed by the fear of crime.

This sense of crisis in their personal lives is really just a reflection of a broader national crisis.

Here, too, evidence is clear: we have underperformed in critical areas by which development is measured:

i) Economic performance: Having grown in the 1950s and 1960s today, GDP per capita is still at the same level as in the 1970s. Not surprisingly, productivity in the Jamaican economy has been stagnant.

ii) Education performance has not improved – despite successive so-called “Educational Revolutions” .
It is true that social groups – poor people – previously excluded from traditional high schools have gained access, yet, two out of three Jamaican children leave school without a single subject at CXC. Many of these are functionally illiterate.

iii) The rise in crime and public disorder represents the area of our starkest failure. A murder rate at 60+/100,000 of the population is among the highest in the world. In 1962 we were 6/100,000 – where Barbados is today.

Today, we are the only country in the Caribbean with the prevalence of armed criminal militias.

Why have we performed so badly as a country?

This is the key question that we have to try to answer if we are to chart a different future. It is a question for this generation to tackle. Previous generations accomplished their mission: that of winning Independence.

For 40 years, however, we have not developed a viable economic and social platform from which to advance development.
There are four central considerations. They do not explain everything, and then there is the question of what is cause and what is effect.

Nevertheless the critical issues are:
1) Underperformance in education. The absence of basic literacy and numeracy, which has resulted in a 70 per cent labour force with no training, has created the condition for low productivity and low levels of trust, and most of all, the condition of poverty.

2) Failure to establish a viable energy economy.
- Beginning with the oil-price shocks of 1973, we have not made any effective effort to deal with high-energy prices neither by conserving effectively, by pursuing other low-cost alternatives.
- High-energy costs have made us uncompetitive in manufacturing.
It has reduced the disposable income of households, which has resulted in a greater reliance on the state in areas like education, health, and has put pressure on the State’s finances.

3) Failure to develop effective public-safety policies.
- Failure to invest in crime control and criminal-justice systems, even as the threat mounted.
- Failure to modernise our legislative framework and to adopt modern methods and investigative techniques.

4) Dysfunctional political culture.
This is perhaps the overriding cause of our underdevelopment. We have developed a political culture over the years.
Excessively partisan and tribalised politics to the point where it has impeded any critical consensus on vital issues of national development is a major issue of concern.

Our history and our politics have been scarred by garrisons, political violence, a reputation for corrupt behaviour, political interference with the public bureaucracy, and now, with complicity with organised crime around narcotics.

Our politics has become prisoner of the short-term calculations of the electoral cycle, and we have abandoned the necessary compromises to be made in the interest of the longer-term advance of Jamaica on the road to development.

The evidence speaks for itself:

Let’s look at the energy sector from 1979 (with the exception of 2009-10). Short-term politics has prevented the necessary price adjustments that must form an essential part of an effective energy agenda.

Education: Our failure is highlighted by the fact that political “sleight of hand” is evident in the “free education” debate. We all agree that education should be a right; we fail to effectively discuss how we are going to pay for it.
Crime has now become a political football again – despite the strenuous efforts made to build bi-partisan support – for example, the bipartisan committee of 2000 and the parliamentary committee of 2004.

The current stand-off and debate over the state of emergency highlights once again that politics has defeated compromise.
- Failure of constitutional reform first broached in 1977 – 33 years ago – perhaps highlights most the importance of our political culture.
Note the Charter of Rights of Rights failures.

Because of this, politics and politicians have fallen in public esteem.

What of the Future?

Are we going to betray future generations and their aspirations and continue to allow Jamaica to languish at the bottom of the development ladder in the Caribbean?
If not, we need to set out on a different course to recover our politics and our country from the doldrums in which we are caught.

Dr Peter D. Phillips is Member of Parliament for East Central St Andrew.

Phillips’ way forward

Anti-Corruption Measures

Tighten contract-procurement measures:

i) Give transparency to all contracts. List all contracts, including subcontracts on the Web.

ii) Establish fit and proper provisions for contractors and subcontractors.

iii) Establish special prosecutor and single anti-corruption agency, amalgamating the current Office of the Contractor General, the Corruption Prevention Commission and the Parliamentary Integrity Commission.

iv) Call on the Electoral Commission and Parliament to consider and implement effective fit and proper criteria for all those who seek elective office – whether at local-government level or for Parliament.

v) We should insist that the Electoral Commission move immediately to design and implement a transparent system for the monitoring and reporting of election campaign financing for political parties.

vi) Immediately pass Charter of Rights legislation.

vii) Set clear timetable for the completion and passage of the constitutional reform proposals contained in the report of the Joint Select Committee.

viii) Take measures to institute impeachment provisions for those who breach their public duty.