Editorial | Revive partnership council

With less than two months before the expiry of the partnership agreement between the Government, political Opposition and other societal stakeholders, the Holness administration should not only confirm that it will renew the accord, but that it will cause it to work as intended.

This, in the first instance, means that there must be regular meetings of the National Partnership Council (NPC), which hasn’t convened in 2026 and had long gaps in its sessions before that. Additionally, agreed institutional systems and arrangements to support the functioning of the council must be put in place.

In April 2024, this newspaper aired its concern over the infrequency of NPC meetings and its sense that the government had become less invested in the idea of a structured social partnership, not merely out of a desire to complain. Rather, it was because of the appreciation of The Gleaner’s Editorial Board that while these arrangements may be difficult to navigate, often requiring people of radically different perspectives to work together, they have real value. As has happened in Jamaica, they can deliver genuine consensus on difficult issues, around which disparate groups can coalesce.

Jamaica has a relatively long and substantial history of using non-traditional vehicles to fashion consensus on politically knotty and divisive questions, such as the matter of electoral reform. On this issue, it used the Electoral Advisory Committee (forerunner to the Electoral Commission of Jamaica) to transfer the management of elections from the direct control of the government to an independent body. A process that was once plagued by violence and fraud is today a globally respected system. The much-heralded Economic Partnership Oversight Committee (EPOC), which in the 2010s monitored Jamaica’s transformative fiscal reform agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was of this lineage.

POPULAR NOTION

But the popular notion of formulating a social contract gained attention in the mid-1990s with the Patterson administration’s failed attempt at a compact on wages and prices between the government, the labour movement and the private sector. At the same time, the Acorn Group – an informal collection of private individuals, private sector executives, civil society activists, trade unionists and public servants in their individual capacities – worked quietly in the background on consensus-building initiatives.

It was largely Acorn’s work that led to the first formal national partnership agreement in 2009. Other four-year pacts followed in 2011, 2013, 2016 and, after a two-year hiatus, the 2022 accord, which will expire in September.

Signed between the Government, Opposition, the private sector, trade unions and civil society groups, the accord called for quarterly meetings of the National Partnership Council (NPC) to discuss new and ongoing government programmes, as well as matters of concern to the other partners.

“The partners, recognising that new critical issues, disputes and even conflicts will arise from time to time during the term of this Agreement, agree to bring our best efforts to the resolution of these issues,” the document said.

According to the agreement, the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) is the NPC’s secretariat, with a minister assigned to coordinate its work, alongside a representative committee from the council. The prime minister is the council’s substantive chairman.

Significantly, the 2022 agreement included an undertaking to “institutionalise the NPC”, including the development of formal terms of reference for the council and its members, how members are selected. their mandate, and NPC’s authority and mandate.

“This information will be documented and taken to the Cabinet for approval within the first year of the agreement,” the document said.

In April 2024, though late, there were signals from the Government that the preparation of this documentation was either well underway or near completion.

However, last October, speaking at a press conference in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, Dr Dana Morris Dixon, the information minister, in addressing the need for a collaborative response to the crisis caused by the storm, highlighted the potential role of the NPC in this exercise and the need for its formalisation.

“We will only be able to fix our issues if we have all our partners at the table,” Dr Morris Dixon said. “It is for that reason that the Government remains committed to the social partnership, because we understand that it is important that all voices have a say ... as we tackle the really important problems that are facing our nation.”

FORMALISE THE NPC

The minister also reiterated the plan to formalise the NPC.

“One of the key goals for this financial year is to have that in place,” she said.

The financial year during which Dr Morris Dixon spoke ended on March 31. The current National Partnership Agreement will expire on September 22.

However, the logic, espoused by Dr Morris Dixon, of Jamaica only being able to “fix our issues if we have all our partners at the table”, will remain unassailable after its expiration. That, indeed, is the logic of the National Partnership Agreement.

The agreement must be extended and the agreed institutional arrangements put in place. It should be also formalised in legislation.