Peter Espeut
I HAVE been watering a dry stick for more than a dozen years now in this column, in the hope that it would spring roots and shoots. Watering a dry stick is a tremendous act of faith (in the tradition of St. Augustine), faith that the dead can come to life, faith that God is not dead, but alive.
I have not been slow over the years in this column calling for good governance and an end to corruption, for an end to garrison politics and for improvements in our substandard education system; and so have many of my colleagues in the media, in the church and in civil society. But as the years go by, the quality of governance seems to deteriorate, corruption seems to increase, the garrisons get stronger and more numerous, and the underperformance of the education system seems to be more pronounced. The more we write, the more the scandals and mismanagement seem to flourish. Indeed the writing seems futile - seems like watering a dry stick - but still we must write and speak, for not to do so would be to support corruption.
In the Westminster system which we undertook to imitate, great store is placed in propriety and honour. If there is even the appearance of impropriety in one's portfolio, honour demands that the incumbent resign to show that they are ashamed such a thing could happen on their watch. They resign and step aside so that others may step in and conduct an objective analysis, and clean up the mess they have made. We in Jamaica do not share the ethical framework which underpins Westminster, and so the system will never work for us. Our incumbents will not resign (they say), because they want to conduct the analysis of what went wrong on their watch with their partisans, with their underlings; they want to fix the mess they have allowed to take place. They just don't get it! They should not be allowed to investigate their own case. It is a profound conflict of interest.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
But then we in Jamaica do not believe in conflicts of interest. I remember asking one Minister of the Environment how he could have created such a profound conflict of interest by placing individuals on the board of the NRCA whose agencies to conduct their business often required permits from the NRCA. I will never forget his answer: he said that what he was doing was not creating conflicts of interest, but promoting "networking" - creating "linkages". For the agency requiring the permits, it was superb networking, supreme linkages; for the NRCA, it was a profound conflict of interest. We in Jamaica do not share the ethical framework which underpins Westminster; many do not even understand it!
Politics can be the ultimate case of the conflict of interest: the lawmakers are the ones with the responsibility to pass laws to keep the lawmakers in check; and so we should not be surprised when they make it hard for themselves to be guilty of a crime. It's a good job, if you can get it!
We need a constitution which will contain adequate checks and balances to prevent the abuse of power by those into whose hands it has been entrusted. The integrity legislation must make it hard for a politician to lack integrity and get away with it. If they are guilty of not filing returns of assets, they must pay a penalty; if they make false declarations (especially by leaving out stuff), they must pay the ultimate penalty. But politicians have designed these declarations to be secret, with great penalties for leaks, to make it unlikely that anyone will ever find out that they have made a false declaration.
WATCHING FOR IMPROPRIETY
In a country with a free press, you would think that with (some elements of) the media watching for impropriety like hawks, hungry for sensational news stories, the government would be eager to avoid scandal by making sure it was squeaky clean. Our governments do not seem to be ashamed of scandals, and do not seem to take particular care to avoid them.
I would have thought that the JLP - hungry for power - would have made sure that the parish councils were squeaky clean, as a sign of things to come. No! Whoever is in power, our system is corrupt, and the best scandals are yet to come. And I for one will continue to water this dry stick.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
