Paulwellian patriotism

Phillip Paulwell has a strange concept of patriotism. To hear the minister tell it, it is patriotic to disregard a public bidding process followed by the Office of the Utilities Regulation (OUR) to secure a preferred bidder for the urgently needed, and economically vital 381-megawatt power-generating project, and to use political influence to inject a new candidate into the process after the bids are in.

The energy minister would have us Jamaicans believe that it is patriotic to accept a 'too good to be true' price linked to unconfirmed LNG supplies, and, further, to accept at face value the promise of late-to-the-show bidder EWI's ability to perform and deliver electricity on deadline date at the "20-year guaranteed price" of about 12.88 US cents per kWh.

He wants us to believe this, in complete disregard of EWI's track record that suggests the opposite to be true. This supposes one can count EWI's history as a 'track record'.

Phillip Paulwell wants Jamaicans to accept as patriotic his refusal to insist on seeing and reviewing proper audited financial statements before signing the licence for EWI to build, own and operate the 381 MW plant.

He has given no explanation as to why he allowed the EWI bid bond to expire before securing the company's performance bond, or why he did not get an extension of the bid bond before issuing the licence.

He said he was being driven by patriotism as a man of action to get the power plant in place. Paulwell wants us to accept his uninformed exuberance, ignorance of financial transactions, forgetfulness or worse, as patriotism.

Certainly one of his most egregious acts last week was to suggest that he would lean on the contractor general, Dirk Harrison, to change his mind concerning his 70-odd page opinion on the terrible manner in which EWI's non-bid breached the entire bidding process - at the hands, action and will of Minister Phillip Paulwell.

We are asked to label his intention towards the contractor general and, in turn, have that changed opinion reverse the negative stance of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) concerning a possible loan to EWI as patriotic.

Jamaicans, Phillip Paulwell wishes, should call that kind of out-of-order prospective ministerial interference with the parlia-mentary-appointed contractor general 'patriotic'.

ORWELLIAN NEWSPEAK

In 1949, George Orwell wrote what has become a really outstandingly classic novel called 1984. It was prophetic in its presentation of a rather nightmarish vision of political state power gone mad and even ghoulish. 1984 is the superb modern classic of 'negative utopia', which created a completely imaginary world which came across as entirely believable.

Orwell created the language 'newspeak' in his 1984 novel. Phillip Paulwell has subjected us to that form of dangerous newspeak nonsense, in terms rendering his controversial, expedient and out-of-control, and some would say, unpatriotic behaviour, as 'patriotic'.

Writing about newspeak in his novel and how it could be used, Orwell penned: "It was of course possible to utter heresies of a very crude kind, a species of blasphemy". Orwell was not only prophetic about 1984, but clearly also about Paulwellian newspeak in 2014 in Jamaica.

His mastery of newspeak has led Minister Paulwell to believe that an announcement of an intention, or of a new project, bring these into being. Performance then becomes announcements.

Such has been the case of his announcement on the rare earth project, and of his strong position on the wheeling of energy while he handled the opposition spokesman portfolio a few years ago.

PRIME MINISTERIAL COVER

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has thrown the private sector and NGOs a sop, and protected her political flank within the party in the way she has dealt with Paulwell's controversial and poor performance on the EWI fiasco.

The sop is to take away the project from Paulwell and give it to Dr Vin Lawrence, and she protected herself in the party by making sure comrade Paulwell kept all his super-ministerial functions, authority, benefits and perks.

She felt she is strong enough to disregard the general disgust of probably a majority of Jamaican's about the way the political crown prince handled the EWI debacle.

Most of her die-hard PNP supports will be pleased that Comrade Crown Prince kept his ministerial position. Madame PM also quelled the revolt of some of her senior Cabinet ministers. She had Paulwell make the announcements in Parliament - if she did, she would have had so say negative things about him that could be replayed as advertising clips later on. Plus, the question would have been asked, if she thought such bad things, why didn't she remove him?

In the process, Portia Simpson Miller has linked her credibility to that of Phillip Paulwell's and used some of her quite considerable political capital to cover him. This bolsters her loyalty in the PNP - but it leaves Jamaica in a very sorry place. It appears that there is nothing one can do, or not do, to lose a ministerial position in this PNP administration.

Prime Minister Simpson Miller, by not firing Phillip Paulwell, will continue to save him from learning anything from his mistakes. Sadly, his strange, skewed Orwellian newspeak sense of patriotism will continue to grow inside him.

Aubyn Hill is the CEO of Corporate Strategies Limited and was an international banker for over 25 years.Email: writerhill@gmail.comTwitter: @HillAubynFacebook: facebook.com/Corporate. Strategies