The Gov’t must explain Seiveright’s job

WERE IT someone other than Delano Seiveright, the public’s response might have been a little less judgemental about his J$9-million travel bill over 15 months. But many people, and not only the partisans, will be happy to conclude that his is just another scandal of a politician living high off the hog at taxpayers’ expense.

There are, in this regard, a number of factors that work against Mr Seiveright. He, surprisingly so for a still young man, is a particularly polarising figure who gives no quarter to opponents and believes, unless he has repudiated those ideas, in the allocation of public-sector jobs to his party activists.

Recall the revelations in the WikiLeaks cables of Mr Seiveright complaining to American diplomats in 2009 about the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration, under Bruce Golding, not moving aggressively to purge the civil service of longstanding employees who he perceived to be People’s National Party (PNP) supporters because of that party’s long incumbency in government.

‘GOING AFTER MEDIA CRITICS’

There was, too, his threat, as president of G2K, a JLP affiliate, to “go after” media critics of his party although he clarified, subsequently, that going after didn’t mean physical violence.

Further, in Opposition, Mr Seiveright was a brutal critic of the PNP administration for its alleged corruption and waste of public resources, including the contracting of party activists and known supporters as consultants, among whom he is now numbered, paid by the Tourism Product Development Company and assigned to the tourism ministry.

More directly related to Mr Seiveright’s travel bill, which will demand finesse in any intervention by Prime Minister Andrew Holness, was the cause

célèbre the JLP made in early 2014 of the J$117 million the PNP had spent on overseas travel over a short period, including J$53 million on trips for then Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller. Like at the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) session this week, Parliament frothed to an angry uproar over that matter.

Mr Seiveright, of course, sees this issue as much made of nothing. He says that taxpayers have gained value for more in terms of the tourism volumes and earnings he helped to generate, and, quite in character, argues that focusing on the concerns raised by PAAC Chairman Wykeham McNeill was a divergence from “a really lacklustre performance” during his four years as tourism minister, up to early 2016.

Mr Seiveright may, indeed, be right. In which event, there is a need for clarification of the demarcation between his role and that of the tourism minister, Ed Bartlett, as well as other technocrats in the tourism establishment and whether his responsibilities are captured in his job title.

His title, we have been told, is that of senior communications strategist in the Ministry of Tourism, which we interpret as the person who crafts the ministry’s long-term communications programme, as well as the tactics for its execution. We expect that the conceptualiser might be part of the team executing the plan.

In his written statement and media interviews in response to this matter, Mr Seiveright has cast his role more as that of a direct business negotiator, shaping deals with foreign enterprises, rather than advising Edmund Bartlett and ministry technocrats on how to position their arguments and delivering Jamaica’s truths. He, in his telling, sounds like Mr Bartlett’s right-hand man.

Nothing is wrong with that. Mr Seiveright may bring unique skills to the table. It, however, demands transparency and a proper basis for Minister Bartlett to justify Mr Seiveright’s frequent overseas trips, for whatever reason he embarks on them.