Persaud Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist
There may be political intrigue in the timing and public airing of dissatisfaction with the impact of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Parliamentarians.
But there is a lot more at stake than immediate political advantage.
Earl Moxam in 'MP demands pay increase' notes that "Mike Henry, MP for Central Clarendon, left no doubt that hewas opposed to any further delay in the granting of pay increases to parliamentarians, when he raised the matter in the meeting of the Standing Finance Committee of Parliament. Personally speaking parliamentarians need far more than they are being paid. I spent about $300,000 this weekend burying people and I make no apologies. I should be paid far more than I am being paid," he stated. [Gleaner, April 4 2007]
Fact is, a Parliamentarian's job ought not to include funding burials. This conception of a politician's role is, in the final analysis, demeaning and harmful to the self esteem of the very constituents being 'assisted'.
Beyond these major issues however, there are an array of problems surrounding both the MoU and this quite glaring appeal to special interest by a politician. My comments are in no way addressed as a partisan political issue - when parliamentarians' pay is increased, it is increased for all.
Mike Henry, parliamentarian, is merely responding to, and within, a system of which he is an integral part.
So, regardless of whether the ruling PNP, as political party, sees his 'outburst' as politically motivated, there is both a conception of Jamaican politics which my late friend Carl Stone dubbed 'clientelism', and economic/financial imperatives that are the drivers here.
Democracy and the necessity for people's dignity and holistic development suggest it is better to remove 'funding burials' from the politician's portfolio and locate it in a state social welfare system that is blind to race, class, colour, political affiliation and religious denomination. Need and the integrity of need should be the sole discriminator.
That system should emanate at parish level, guided preferably by a majority non-partisan, non-political board of governor - say on a 5 of 9 membership basis - members of which should be removable for cause.
That aside, consider the economics of the issue.
Government has used the MoU as a device to reduce recurrent expenditure in the fiscal budget.
The MoU is a synonym for wages policy or a time-oriented wage freeze. All government workers have their wages controlled by government decree, albeit in some consensual way.
The fact that parliamentarians appear to have gone along with this device demonstrates that at some point they were all of the view that if sacrifice is required, they should participate in the ritual.
The underlying bases for this device seem to be twofold. First government cannot afford the money for big wages, second wage increases are thought to feed inflation. Inflation becomes the driver of impulses to exchange rate depreciation-devaluation-in the floating exchange rate system.
We are committed to maintaining a stable but floating exchange rate regime. This accounts for MoU centrality as a load bearing beam in government's economic policy.
If parliamentarians' salaries are to be de-coupled from this structure, will it fall apart? Not immediately, but certainly there will be rumblings sufficient to make the Richter scale.
The outcome depends on negotiations and political maneuverings.
As an empirical fact though, at least of the 1970s UK, where it was tried, wages policy - read freeze ?— did not deliver the goods it was meant to.
It provided a kind of breathing space but then created a bulge at the end. In other words, pent-up demands for wage increases shuffle in as soon as it becomes possible and if indeed wages are not the prime driver of inflation the policy can hardly be defended on economic grounds. It can obviously be defended on fiscal prudence grounds.
But that raises other, perhaps even more significant issues. If support is to be on grounds of fiscal prudence then what of the various incidents of cost overruns in government contracts? What of other forms of inefficiency and waste in the public sector? Finally, why was there a coupling of parliamentarians' and permanent secretaries' salaries? And why are they now to be decoupled? This is surely a political issue but, at its core, it really is an issue of the grounds upon which compensation is determined.
Is this market driven in an essentially market economy? Is the MoU at the end of the day a bargaining process? It does takes place in an open market, admittedly a special one.
wilbe65@yahoo.com
