- Rudolph Brown/Staff Photographer
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson seems to be contemplating the mammoth task he faces to instill confidence in the Government, even as he listens to Finance Minister, Dr. Omar Davies, making his contribution to the Budget Debate in the House on April 17, 2003.
"The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake, and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up; 'repairer of the breach', they shall call you, 'restorer of the homesteads'.
-- Isaiah 58:12
OPPOSITION Spokesman on Finance, Audley Shaw, ended his Budget presentation with this apt Biblical text, which is an excellent one for Prime Minister, P.J. Patterson, to embody as he makes his own presentation to the Budget Debate this Tuesday.
The Prime Minister himself has said that he wants his legacy to be that of a repairer of the breach; a man who would have left a legacy of peace, harmony and unity in the nation.
He has little time to do so and his presentation on Tuesday must leave absolutely no doubt that he is actively engaged in the mission.
The PM should surround himself with not just the political pundits, economic and technical advisors and public relations people, but also those who are behavioural specialists and masters of political communications. By which I don't mean spinmeisters, con artists and slick masters of deception.
This is precisely what the Jamaican people are revolted by and incensed with. The Jamaican people want people who can genuinely touch their heart and soul, not just their mind. They want to hear from a Prime Minister who understands their pain, their fears, their disappointments, their anger and disillusionment as well as their hopes.
A presentation which attempts to dazzle people with statistics and facts and figures, and which merely attempts to reply to Opposition Leader Edward Seaga's analysis on Thursday as to "why we are poor" or to Shaw's strident attacks will be woefully inadequate and will just lead people to tune out.
This Budget Debate has had a surfeit of bland statistics and figures and abstruse economic jargon. We must come to understand these technical matters, certainly, and can't survive on a diet of mushy stuff, but now we need to get to what Professor Brian Meeks called for on Thursday morning on the Breakfast Club -- paradigms.
SENSE OF VISION
The PM needs to infuse the nation with a sense of vision; a sense that we are actually going somewhere; that the enormous sacrifices being called for will not be in vain and that he needs us to make it happen.
The tone set by Finance and Planning Minister, Dr. Omar Davies, was the kind of humble, conciliatory one that the country wanted but never thought it would get from him.
A more gentle, mild-mannered and ironic Dr. Davies will win friends and influence people. Note even his statements about his willingness to look into the suggestions for scrapping the proposal to put GCT on certain agricultural items.
Even if the cynical say it took the chastening from his "on the road to the fourth term" statement to bring him to this level of humility, it would be worth it, and we are all beneficiaries.
A conciliatory spirit is always better than a belligerent or stubborn one.
It was refreshing to hear the Minister say in his Budget presentation that "I have deliberately refrained from embellishing these closing remarks with anything which would smack of partisan rhetoric because the objective reality is that we do have a national problem which has to be treated in a serious and analytic way."
And further to hear him say, "For those observers who feel that the Budget should have been smaller, I respect your opinions. However, we sincerely believe -- (otherwise). The fact is that, despite the rhetoric which would seem to separate various contributors to the debate, there can be no disagreement that there is a need to reduce and eliminate the budget deficit."
To the uninitiated in the psychology of communication, these concessions might seem minor. But they are not.
How we speak to each other and the respect we accord opposing views says a lot about our ability to influence and connect with people. The harsh, adversarial and polemical rhetoric in certain contexts does considerable harm and sets us back if our larger mission is to win over support and enlist people in a common struggle and vision.
BIG PROJECTS WON'T DO
It will not be enough for the Prime Minister to go to the House of Representatives to announce some big projects, to announce this or that new programme to help the private sector or the poor. We want neither bread nor circus.
I can do no better than to quote from Professor Don Robotham in that memorable 1998 Grace Kennedy Foundation lecture on Vision and Voluntarism: "The real challenge is to define a positive alternative of what Jamaica should be that we can stand for and that we should be trying to bring into being. There is no rationale being the term 'Jamaican' which expresses any sense of common purpose. That is our fundamental problem."
And in this time of serious national challenge, our Prime Minister, in statesman-like fashion, must bring us all together and inspire us to united action.
The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) people who hear Mr. Patterson on Tuesday, as well as the many persons who have rejected the two main political parties, must feel the same sense of hope, the tinge of optimism and the sense that the PM really seems to understand what is going on that die-hard PNP people feel.
PM MUST BE HONEST
With all the talk about various economic indices, which has been dominating the media, especially the morning and evening discussion programmes, if people are not motivated and energised there will be no improvement in productivity and creativity, without which we will never earn our way out of our problems.
The Prime Minister must connect with the people in a deeply empathetic way.
I would love to hear the Prime Minister graphically and feelingly give some examples of the kinds of difficulties and hardships that he knows that members of the working class and the young professional class are undergoing.
Forget, sir, that you are the leader of the party or the head of the Government under whose term these hardships might be taking place. Just show that you understand.
Painting a rosy picture will win no more amens than you would normally get from the choir. But showing that you truly understand that housewife or baby mother and her pain in making those few dollars stretch will accomplish that.
SOCIAL CAPITAL
We underestimate, to our own peril, the value of social capital.
The University of the West Indies (UWI) hosted a grossly under-reported and very significant Caribbean Labour Policy Conference at the Mona campus here recently.
One of the important papers represented was the one on Social Dialogue for Sustainable Development: The Case of Barbados and the Implications For the Caribbean by the International Labour Organisation's Tayo Fashoyin.
The paper notes that "In periods of economic upheavals, social dialogue can help in gaining consensus on important national issues such as wage restraints, labour-management cooperation and a commitment to productivity improvement".
Fashoyin points out in this paper that "Social dialogue helps to forestall social instability and obstacles that might arise if affected stakeholders are not consulted or their views not taken into account in policy
decisions".
In the 1990s, Barbados experienced an unprecedented crisis manifested by a sharp decline in tourism earnings, a high fiscal deficit, ballooning national debt and a dramatic increase in inflation. The country's external account weakened to a deficit of 4.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1990/91, and the central Government deficit moved from one per cent of GDP in 1989 to 7.5 per cent in 1990-91.
The country's liquid foreign reserves were down to 1.33 weeks of imports. Unemployment moved from 14.7 per cent in 1989 to 23 per cent in 1991.The country was forced to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a structural adjustment loan.
It was social dialogue and the strengthening of the social capital base which provided the foundation to tackle the fiscal and other deficits.
In Jamaica, we believe that that the economy is paramount, not understanding the social and cultural factors affecting economic growth.
The Barbadian workers, management and Government worked together harmoniously in a social partnership which saw a significant turnaround in economic fortunes.
Unemployment fell to 9.8 per cent in 1998, inflation has dropped sharply to less than three per cent since 1995 and there has been an average four per cent economic growth over eight years since 1993. You see what social dialogue and social partnership can do.
SOCIAL GOVERNANCE
"The institutionalisation of social dialogue was a significant outcome in consolidating trust and cooperation, enabling the parties to share information and to carry out important innovations to the industrial relations system, enabling the parties an important mechanism by which issues of the national economy and enterprise competitiveness were discussed in tripartite and bipartite fora".
One of the most significant and far-reaching proposals which have been put on the table by the JLP in its 2002 election manifesto was for the creation of a Social Governance Council. This highly progressive and enlightened proposal should be adopted by the Government, even if the name is changed.
According to the proposal, the Social Governance Council would be chaired by the Prime Minister himself and comprised of Ministers of the Cabinet with portfolios dealing with social policy. Civil society would select representative members from the most relevant organisations in civil society, including people from the church, trade unions, women's, youth and environmental organisations, and "organisations for ethical governance".
The JLP manifesto further outlined that the establishment of the Council would allow for "greater transparency and accountability in public affairs; a stronger base for fighting corruption in public and private life; more responsive and effective Governmental solid platform for sustainable development to fight poverty; protect the vulnerable and disadvantaged and secure dynamic growth."
This is first-rate, First World policy thinking and would go a far way in establishing the social dialogue and social partnership arrangement which helped to turn around the Barbadian economy and which has provided the stimulus for growth in certain other developing countries.
Noted economists, Joseph Stiglitz and Dani Rodrik, have pointed to the growth-inducing effects of institutional arrangements like these.
We must adopt good ideas from wherever they come. Dr. Davies put it well in his Budget presentation recently.
"The (economic) programme cannot just be seen as one advanced by the administration on its own. If as a society we refuse to accept that adjustments must be made our creditors will simply walk away, leaving the country without the wherewithal to meet its obligations. The financial markets are looking for any disruption which would undermine our claim that we are presenting a credible financial programme in the context of social stability. The world is watching us."
Fashoyin in his paper notes that while "all sides recognise the needs for a monetary and exchange rate policy, the problem posed by wage-push inflation, unemployment and embedded social inequality, no party (meaning group) appears willing to see beyond the sectional interests. As critics argue, the will and determination to address divisive issues such as these through social dialogue does not exist in Jamaica". How tragic.
Prime Minister P. J. Patterson must counter that impression decisively - and concretely - on Tuesday.
