Join Paulwell’s Damascus road

OLD DOGS may, after all, be able to learn new tricks – and for the better. Which is one of the takeaways from Phillip Paulwell’s sadly too-little-noticed speech in Parliament on Tuesday.

The portion of the remarks by the East Kingston and Port Royal member of parliament (MP), exploring what should be the job of a parliamentarian, ought to be required reading for his colleagues in the House and the issue made the subject of a special committee, tasked with making recommendations on the core responsibilities of legislators and their obligations to the constituents. The last time something approximating this was attempted was in Oliver Clarke’s 2004 report on parliamentarians’ salaries. That was before the creation, with bipartisan vigour, of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), whose name is a sort of liner note justification for the expansion of political patronage.

What, essentially, Mr Paulwell, a five-term member of the House, has now acknowledged – even as newer members of the legislature yelped for increased allocations to the fund – is the corrosive nature of the politics represented by the CDF, and the inability of MPs to deliver in accordance with the expectations they encouraged in voters. The politics of patronage, although Mr Paulwell didn’t put it quite that way, which is a logical thread of his arguments, undermines the institutions of Government and, ultimately, weakens the State.

URGENT REFORM

In other words, Jamaica is at a dangerous place and in need of urgent reform.

“I believe that we (MPs) have to change focus from the high premium that is placed on patronage and to focus more on the broader developmental needs of our constituencies,” Mr Paulwell, the shadow energy minister, said in an ongoing debate that is supposedly aimed at giving backbenchers an opportunity to influence how the finance minister crafts the coming year’s Budget.

Jamaica’s high incidence of poverty, he argued, had forced parliamentarians to spend much time “dealing with the urgent basic needs” of their constituents. “The truth is that MPs have very limited available resources to give assistance,” Mr Paulwell said.

But it was supposedly to give MPs the ability to respond directly, and quickly, to constituents that the CDF was launched by the Golding administration in the 2000s. But that it would serve to further entrench the system of patronage could hardly have been lost on anyone. The scheme has since been retained with strong cross-party support, although fiscal constraints have, over several years, kept the annual allocation to MPs (J$22 million each in the current fiscal year) at less than half the J$40 million at which it started in 2008. It is popular because it allows politicians to spend taxpayers’money with weak oversight. Indeed, the personal terms in which MPs talk about how they utilise the CDF money are often striking – and seemingly contagious. Indeed, new members joined old ones this year defending the CDF, boasting about how they distributed their allocations, and calling for additional amounts.

But, said Mr Paulwell: “Welfare should not be the responsibility of MPs. In a well-run state, the government provides help to those in need. We must put the required systems in place and insist that the responsibility is shifted back as quickly as possible.”

He added: “There will be no need for a Constituency Development Fund if state agencies perform their functions dutifully and impartially.”

TAKE ON MEANINGFUL TASKS

Extricated from the responsibility of welfare providers and purveyors of patronage, Mr Paulwell suggested MPs could better take on the “far more meaningful task”of advocating for the“developmental goals for our constituencies”.

“These should cover social and economic areas, including the educational needs and physical infrastructural requirements,”he said. “It is appropriate that each constituency has a long-term development plan crafted through a process of meaningful consultation, involving a wide cross section of the constituency interest and, of course, the relevant state agencies.”

In the new dispensation, which would better approximate how the Westminster model was intended to work, MPs wouldn’t be in drag-out skirmishes for the ears and attention of ministers, in which those of the governing party have the decided advantage. Mr Paulwell’s position isn’t mainstream Jamaican politics, including in his own People’s National Party, which he represents.

But there are plenty of good reasons why it should be, including if only for the self-interest of the political class in which Jamaicans have little, and declining, confidence. In last year’s general election, for example, less than 38 per cent of the registered voters cast ballots, and the governing party won with only 21.3 per cent support of registered electors, continuing the recent trend of declining participation by voters.

Moreover, upwards of 70 per cent of Jamaicans believe the country is corrupt, and less than half have confidence in politicians and the Parliament. Other institutions hardly do better. Indeed, a majority of voters would countenance a military coup if it were to attack corruption.

Put another way, politicians and the institutions they oversee face a crisis. If they want to remain relevant as a class, they have to do things to begin to turn around negative perception of the species. Suggestions like Mr Paulwell’s are low-hanging fruit. He should be joined on the way to Damascus.