Seaga... "A new order of governance would be born with all the virtues of which we dream for the observance of good government." - Norman Grindley /Staff Photographer The following are excerpts from the Budget Debate presentation of Leader of the Opposition Mr. Edward Seaga in the House of Representatives yesterday.
A DOZEN years of this nightmare of crisis after crisis is beyond the threshold of tolerance. There are signs that the system is beginning to break.
With every failure to meet a targeted level of fiscal deficit, prices move to compensate, debt increases, jobs are lost, capital becomes more reluctant to invest and the economy slides deeper into stagnation.
Every monetary excess, every unnecessary mega expenditure, every programme of wasted revenue or corrupt siphoning of public funds, yields the same distressing, demoralising breakdown of the system and abandonment by the players.
Why should the country continue to tolerate this inglorious record of non-performance? If the system does not work because those who control it do not understand it or distort it to serve a different agenda, then the system must be strengthened with mandatory requirements set out in law to compel them to do the right thing.
Why should the country helplessly watch excessive liquidity in the monetary system cause the rate of exchange to slide and prices to soar out of reach. There must be mandatory requirements in law which prescribe the tolerable level of money supply.
Why should excessive levels of fiscal deficit cause unnecessary tax burdens and punitive interests rates. There should be a prescribed base level in law below which the deficit must not fall.
Nor must the national debt which burdens the nation today, tomorrow and for future generations to come, expand its size and its burden recklessly. There must be a limitation by law.
UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES
It will be readily said by way of objection that unforeseen circumstances can cause failed performance and unmet targets for which policy makers cannot be held responsible. This is true. Eventualities of acts of god or war, or disasters of substantial magnitude, must be allowable for adjustment of targets, in the same way that the IMF adjusts its performance criteria in the event of disasters like flood rains. It can be done!
It will be said that failure to meet targets brings no sanction other than media rebuke, personal condemnation and some political fall out, and these are ineffective in ensuring that repetition does not occur. This is undoubtedly true. But the answer is not to abandon the need for a stronger system. The solution is to create a procedure which will impose stronger sanctions equal to the task. Such a procedure is possible. Its application to non-performance can be effective. It can be done!
IMPEACHMENT
Impeachment of high officials-elected parliamentarians or non-elected officials is the traditional parliamentary process for dealing with a range of offences which are neither violations of criminal nor civil law, but are serious breaches which have far reaching impact. It is not the intention to spell out the broad process of impeachment here. A resolution is on the order paper of this honourable house for debate. Sufficient to say that it includes among impeachable offences: failure to carry out a responsibility of great importance with which an individual is charged, corruption and bringing the office held by the individual into public disrepute. The penalty is removal of the offending individual from office.
Impeachment, as would be expected, is a process which must involve many checks and balances to ensure justice. This is where past efforts to introduce impeachment as a parliamentary process in Jamaica has failed to surmount the obstacles. As a result, although introduced in the constitutional reform committee by the opposition seven years ago it has been stalemated.
Today, I offer a new proposal to enable the process of impeachment to move forward.
To identify an act which could be cited as an impeachable offence must involve the courts to ensure fairness. The central consideration is to hinge impeachment on failure to perform specific criteria of good governance.
JUST ADMINISTRATION
In our system, members of the cabinet are the sole executive managers of government. It is their responsibility to provide for just administration; the safeguarding of human rights; protection of the revenue, just administration and good management of the public affairs of Jamaica. These are fundamental principles of good governance. Although Cabinet members are duty bound to honour these principles, they are not legally bound and, therefore, there are no sanctions if they are negligent in the performance of their duties or deliberately avoid their responsibilities. To bring them under the framework of the law, cabinet members would be required to take an oath of office which would then subject their performance to interpretation by the court, or to a prerogative writ.
At present, the oath of Office of the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers requires them to swear to "freely give advice to the Governor-General -- for the good management of the public affairs of Jamaica".
This is a completely meaningless oath of office. In our system of government, the Governor-General holds no responsibility for management. To swear to advise the Governor-General on the management of the public affairs of Jamaica is a non sequitur, an obsolete colonial provision from the days when the representative of the crown held a portfolio of management.
There is a need to replace this relic of obsolescence with an oath of office which will bind every Prime Minister of Jamaica and cabinet to be accountable for the principles of good governance. So too would it bind the leader of the opposition and members of parliament as holders of high public office based on specific oaths prescribed for them. Impeachment is not an exclusive process. It is inclusive of all who hold high public office, including the Governor-General.
THE OATH
The oath of Office for the Prime Minister and Ministers of this or any Government of Jamaica would then read:
"... and I do further swear that I will at all times faithfully and diligently without fear or favour discharge my responsibilities to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of our citizens and that I will faithfully observe all laws which provide for the protection of the public revenues, just administration and good management of the public affairs of Jamaica".
Failure to:
Protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of the people;
Provide for a just administration;
Prudently manage and protect the revenues of the country; or
Provide good management of the public affairs of Jamaica. Would be impeachable offences to be tried before the high court.
Because the matter before the court is based on a constitutional oath, if there is any doubt concerning the offence, the court can be petitioned to interpret the offence and make a declaration.
Likewise, the prerogative writs could be invoked:
Failure to perform could be subject to a writ of mandamus to compel performance of any duty spelled out in the oath;
A writ of prohibition can be taken to prevent an action which is considered to be in violation of any of the principles of the oath; and
The court can be approached for hearing a writ of certiorari to quash an act which has been done in violation of any tenet of the oath. The final step would be to place an offence which is determined by the court to violate the tenets of good governance, as sworn by oath, before the parliament for a declaration of impeachment proceedings to begin and, if approved by parliament, then before the high court for trial.
The fearsome nature of expulsion from office by impeachment would strike terror in the hearts of high officials, elected or non-elected who:
- Abuse the rights and freedoms of the citizen;
- Unjustly practice discrimination and victimisation;
- Neglect to prudently manage the public revenue;
- Corruptly siphon public funds to their private use or divest public assets
to their personal ownership;
- Demean or bring into disrepute the office they hold; or -Fail to provide
good management of the public affairs of Jamaica.
- A new order of governance would be born with all the virtues of which we
dream for the observance of good government.
IMPROPER MANAGEMENT
No more:
- Abuse of rights and freedoms;
- Unjust administration;
- Discrimination and victimisation;
- Imprudent handling of the revenues; or
- Improper management of the public affairs of Jamaica, Without the ultimate
sanction of impeachment and expulsion from office.
To these we add, observance of ratios of permissible levels of tolerance in
money supply, fiscal deficit and national indebtedness.
The level of economic ratios for the good government of the economy would be
set by parliament each year in a select committee, chaired by the minister of
finance, which would be accessible to private interest groups.
This new order of governance would strengthen the checks and balances of the system and re-focus public scrutiny on observance of lack of accountability. These could now be effectively monitored and prosecuted, replacing the helplessness and hopelessness with which citizens now view acts of non-performance, mal-performance, corruption and abuse.
The new order would transfer some effective authority for governance from the singular discretion of political masters to the plural responsibility of a vigilant civil society acting in concert with the political directorate and other players in the management of public affairs.
THE NEW ORDER
The new order would carry a simple message: Government by systems, not men. Men will come and go but systems must always prevail in determining right and wrong in governance.
Subjective judgement will always play a role in the administration of public affairs but it must never dominate a system of good administration as collectively determined and agreed.
Jamaica needs a new political order. It does not require the rejection of a system we know and understand because it is open to abuse, replacing it with one which is alien to our political culture. Our system can be strengthened to put effective strength and authority in the hands of civil society, and management, which can be monitored, in the hands of the elect of the people and high officials.
Then a new day will dawn free of the anxieties of a disorderly, corrupt non-functional society, free to view the future positively without these anxieties. Free to lift the veil which covers reluctant capital, transforming it into willing investment. Free to open doors of opportunity closed by fear and favour. Free to release the dynamic of the full human spirit of Jamaicans who yearn for their country to be respected again; for pride in themselves and their endeavours to return; for the birthright of their children to be re-defined as brightness for the future; and for the ill-will of injustice to be supplanted by the goodwill of fairness; the intolerance of disorder to be replaced by the conformity of good order; and for the distress, depression subjugation and subversion of the human spirit and, in particular, the down trodden poor, to be lifted so that it can soar as high as it can reach and beyond to new heights.
We must begin now with all seriousness of purpose and commitment of will, to bring an end to the abuses which have been plagued and tormented Jamaica. It is said that our problems are a beginning for which there is an end. We must now, with full determination, re-cast our own future and take it into our own hands as our imperative to ensure, in the words of Winston Churchill, that we will now face, not - "the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end".
May God bless our country and help us find and deserve the end of a bitter and the beginning of a better life.
