Ronald Thwaites | A clear moral compass

I get it. NaRRA is the mechanism of getting around a sluggish public sector. Take on all the big projects, relegate the expensive MDAs to serve as maintenance crews. Melissa relief will get some attention but sufferers in the west will continue to be crowded out by the big-ticket projects. Remember, those parishes trend PNP anyway.

You can’t help but notice. Every week, the remit of the National Reconstruction Authority is widened and public trust in its prospects is weakened. Palisadoes, Vernamfield and the new parliamentary complex are the most recent additions to the wish list. A new stadium is likely to follow.

The agency which is supposed to be the solution to the problems caused by Melissa is in acute danger of itself becoming a part of the problem. Why?

All this is happening while doctors and contractors can’t be paid, courts can’t keep up, and nothing is being said about the reality that the public sector wage bill is soon going to overwhelm the taxation intake, with no appreciable increase in productivity. Potential development capital is being sterilised at public expense while pressure on the dollar is threatening to “bus’ pipe”.

POOR SERVICE

From personal experience last week, having to interact with two ministries and one public sector agency, I encountered unnecessary impediments and expensive obstacles to productive effort. And there is no recourse. Naming and shaming will only reinforce the wall of resistance. There are no sanctions for public-sector underperformance. There is little, if any, oversight. Ministers know about the constipation but can and will do nothing to correct it. The forces of entropy know their political clout. No single Administration dares to try comprehensive reform of the civil service and its appendages.

“ They (the Scribes and Pharisees … who occupy the chair of Moses) tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders but will they lift a finger to move them? Not they!” (Matthew Ch 23 v 4)

UNLIMITED POWER

So NaRRA is being handed effective control of most, if not all, of the capital budget, as well as the restoration borrowings, under the complete and legally unimpeachable control of the head of the governing party. That is our carbon copy of Mr Trump’s supreme executive authority gifted him by a toadyish Congress and Supreme Court. Both examples are the very antithesis of democratic governance.

As Dwayne Vernon pointed out so in this space last Thursday, important institutional safeguards are being bypassed, normal ministerial responsibility will be overlooked in a carefully contrived climate of secrecy and subterfuge. This is morally wrong. And it is likely to fail. The toothless oversight body seems to have recognised their incapacity as quickly as Ms Zachariah of passing White House fame.

But the money will certainly be spent.

WHAT ‘GONE BAD A MORNIN’

It has started already with the rent and salary fiasco. It will become aggravated when the scores of other staff members are recruited whose wages will no doubt have to be linked to that of their chief.

Fayval has set up herself, and the rest of us, when teachers, police and health professionals demand comparability with NaRRA’s extravagance.

The massive accretion of prime ministerial power inherent in the NaRRA construct is repugnant to the constitutional principle of checks and balances and the ethical mandate for fairness. It breaches the principle of subsidiarity and narrows the agency of all Jamaicans whose engagement and revived national spirit are essential for restoration.

CULTURING LIFE

The dignity and divine purpose of all creation, and especially of every human life from conception to natural death, is the fundamental belief of Christians. Despite horrible violations of this truth by Christians themselves throughout history, every act of negligent, wilful or reckless killing is a contempt against God and a diminishment of our own humanity.

As Pope Leo says, “you cannot kneel before the crucified Christ and cheer on the machinery of death”.

That is why all of us must condemn the slaughter which took place near Sligoville last week, and especially mourn the killing of policemen who lost their lives in the pursuit of everyone’s safety. Reprisals would be as evil as the original crimes.

There is what St John Paul II called “a culture of death” rampant in the Jamaican psyche. Having been taught by the experiences of history that some lives are expendable and there is a selective entitlement to kill, we sanction retribution, recrimination, violence and cruelty. By so doing, we condemn ourselves to social disorder and refuse to comprehend why peace and prosperity continue to elude us.

STUFFED EGOS

As Dr Vernon describes it: the “nuffness” of the people at the top, the “blue light above the law posse”, becomes the learned behaviour of lower-level officials and especially the youth. Consider the undeserved validation sought by the St Thomas councillors who are frightened of press coverage or the desperate May Pen mayor who can’t yet bring himself to accept the consequence of a lost majority.

An absence of shame is not the same thing as courage. How does the public benefit when ego-stroking is added to the virulence of political tribalism and defiles public policy? They are behaving like the sore loser of the 2020 United States presidential election.

ABOUT CONTRACTS

Confirmation that public contracts are being routinely divided up to evade procurement requirements and showered like confetti upon favourites should surprise no one. Is so it go. What is depressing is that the ministerial and parliamentary discourse that follows seeks to impugn or dilute the Auditor General and Integrity Commission rather than correct corruption and waste.

IT’S JUST A GAME

For years, Dr Lascelles Graham has inveighed against the commercialisation of school sports and the commodification of athletes just to secure the prestige of winning. Character formation and academic competence become secondary priorities. Consider the embarrassment at the noble Jamaica College recently. Surely the young footballer himself, his parents or coach must have been aware of his ineligibility to compete, whoever else claims to have been in the dark.

Life in a society without a clear moral compass is likely to be “nasty, brutish and short”. Why not change direction?

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 retired principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.