Ronald Thwaites | Taking the Budget seriously

Recently the government has been encouraging all of us to take a keen interest in the current budget exercise. They claim that the budget is for “all a wi”. This is a hard sell, but nevertheless commendable. Even if their unstated but obvious motive is to use the budget exercise to impress suspicious and apathetic voters to give them another chance, public awareness of all that the process entails is a good move.

For here’s how it goes. By electing a government, we, the public, give them, some of whom can’t pass the Integrity Commission but who know how to grant themselves 200 per cent salary increases, the right to take from our pockets, under pain of criminal sanction, any amount of money they please. This while the rest of us suck salt.

We also give government the right to borrow money as they think fit and thus to create a mortgage which our children and grandchildren will have to repay. This year more than a trillion dollars will be spent for what our leaders, bent on reelection, think is in our best interests.

UNCONVINCED

Most of us are not convinced. We ‘chups’ our teeth, try to avoid tax and opt out of the political process. By doing so we are abandoning our own self-interest. By default, we allow the guineagogs to define our prospects: who will eat and who will starve, who will prosper and who will quail – ultimately who will live and who will die.

The national budget is serious business for good or for evil. Which is why it should demand the greatest care and scrutiny. But it won’t get that. The way money is spent is largely a repetitive exercise of ensuring that the heavy expense of the government bureaucracy is provided for whether it is purposeful, efficient or not. The capital budget frequently restates provision for expenditure which was to have taken place in previous years but, just like this year’s iteration, probably will not be achieved despite all the promises and ground-breaking. Remind yourself about the new parliament building or any of the bruk-down bridges, if you want to start the litany of examples. The principle of accountability will not figure in the big speeches or spending lines.

NO INPUT

Members of parliament and even most Cabinet ministers have no input in budget crafting. The big yellow book containing the Estimates of Expenditure is printed with most legislators seeing it for the first time after the opening of the parliamentary year. So much for participatory government.

When the volume gets to Committee for supposed scrutiny, queries are discouraged, changes are inconsequential, the exercise rushed and perfunctory. God help the government member who, like Oliver Twist, asks for more for his or her constituency. If you are on the other side of the aisle, any disquiet is savagely shut down. The die is already “cost” as the late OT Williams would have said. All this while the host of civil servants in the wings show bored smugness- after all, they don’t have to face constituents and elections, do they?

There follow the florid speeches replete with expensive live broadcasts plus the ward-healers and faithful contributors squashed in the gallery. Thereafter the anti-climax of a final vote and in two weeks no one remembers the escapade.

A SACRED TASK

Is this what we are being asked to pay more attention to? To me the national budget is a sacred instrument. It deals with life-altering matters like food, housing, health, education, security and personal freedom. Approving, dispensing and monitoring the patrimony of the people are holy tasks – certainly the most serious responsibility that any political representative carries out.

The scrutiny of the Budget ought to be deliberative and thorough. It should be preceded by a searching assessment of the necessity of every line of the estimates and its congruence with the principle of the common good. Stewardship of scarce resources is a deeply-ingrained Biblical principle. Those who flout it out of greed, carelessness or corruption (like Judas) will face judgment here and hereafter. Especially this year when external conditions are going to be adverse, we ought to scrutinize this budget with a conviction that we can and must do much better for ourselves with what we have. Priorities

Take for instance the very hopeful Grade 7 Academy project now taking shape. One of their serious obstacles to learning is the lack of proper nutrition. Those already disadvantaged students who are still responding poorly, come to school hungry. Thanks and blessings to Dr. Troupe and Dr. Gordon of the Ministry of Education for providing some snacks. Other people who have less than five loaves and two fishes are performing the miracle of providing porridge. But what about the tens of thousands of hungry kids in other schools, despite the billions spent (efficiently?) by the State on school feeding and the even more billions which adult parents splurge on bashment? The renowned economist Thomas Piketty is reminding the Gordon House posse that “learning is the key to prosperity”. Deal with universal literacy before the splurge on STEAM.

BEFORE PASSING THIS BUDGET

We all need to read Matthew 25 and invite our all-powerful leaders to consider as Rev. Fraser, the Baptist pastor, asks us referring to the Good Samaritan story, “are we just passing by on the other side while our brothers and sisters suffer”? Or contemplate the meaning of Rev. Cowan’s call at the recent Baptist convention, for us to model “God’s economy of enough” where those responsible for the Budget cease to be “chaplains to corrupt systems” and instead uplift an ethic of solidarity and self-reliance.

I am convinced that our resources can provide superior opportunity for flourishing for our diminishing population if only we rated each other as ourselves.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com