Credibility is crucial to politics

KEN CHAPLIN

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

In politics the credibility of those who govern is most important. Many believe the Jamaica Labour Party lost the election in December, partly because of the way it handled the Manatt-Christopher Coke extradition affair. And they questioned the credibility of its prime minister and leader, Bruce Golding.

In the first few weeks of its administration, the People's National Party also had a credibility problem. This is strange because it had lashed the JLP government over lack of credibility. This column expressed the view from the time of the announcement that the PNP government was planning to use money from the US$400-million Chinese government-funded road improvement programme, the Jamaica Infrastructure Development Programme (JIDP), to help finance its Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme (JEEP), that JIDP had very little money left in its coffers. Therefore, the government would have to look elsewhere for money to fund JEEP as the creation of jobs is of critical importance to the social stability of the country.

The government turned to a programme initiated by the previous JLP government to create jobs as a start. The programme, financed by the Inter-American Development Bank, was renamed JEEP and gave the impression that the government was claiming ownership for what it did not create. I worked closely with Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller years ago when she was a minister, and unless she has changed, that is not her style. She gave credit where credit was due. The only conclusion one can draw is that she was misled. In several respects JEEP had many features of the JLP programme, including comprehensive road maintenance on the northern coastal highway from Negril to Port Antonio.

Of course, in the many years I have worked in government, it is an unusual occurrence for present governments to give credit to past governments. As head of the editorial division of the Jamaica

Information Service, editor-in-chief and later chairman of the national news agency, JAMPRESS, and press secretary to the prime minister, I used to insist that credit should be given to the past government by way of background information for any project carried out by

the previous government, if this was not mentioned at a function.

When there was a change of government in 2007, this column suggested that the new Jamaica Labour Party government tell the country what it had inherited.from the outgoing People's National Party government. But the then government resisted all calls to "tell on them" until late in the 2011 election campaign when only a few things were mentioned. By that time it was too late. It appeared that over the years there was an unwritten code for the incoming government not to tell of the sins of the outgoing government.

However, this has been busted by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller. She announced at a PNP meeting in Ocho Rios that she had mandated all her ministers to tell Jamaica what they inherited since they took office and declared that her administration would not take the blame for what, according to her, was mismanagement of the country under the previous government.

This column is suggesting that new governments reveal the mismanagement of their predecessors in order to discourage corruption. I am therefore backing Simpson Miller's mandate. If the JLP wants to soft-pedal on exposing corruption, should they return to power, that is their business. In the national interest, all mismanagement and corruption in government should be exposed. Dr Omar Davies, minister of transport and works, and Lisa Hanna, minister of youth and culture, have already started the ball a-rolling. Dr Davies has gone deeply into expenditure in the JIDP while Hanna is querying the state of accounts and management of the Jamaica 50 celebrations.

It is one thing to search for mismanagement, but quite another to close down a project under that pretext, when the real reason is to get rid of the workers hired by the previous government so that you can bring in your own. Much of this happened in the 1960s, l970s,1980s and 1990s and created much disturbance. In one case recently, PNP supporters marched on a project, demanding that the JLP supporters be fired and they be hired instead. This cannot work in the year 2012. Jobs have to be distributed based on skill and equity. Jobs should not be handed out by members of parliament; but by state agencies, otherwise there is bound to be discrimination

Gas stations' scam

When buying gas at service stations, motorists should keep their eyes on the gas pumps to ensure that they are not robbed. At a gas station in the New Kingston area recently, I suspected that the amount of gas I ordered was short on two occasions, so I kept my eyes on the pump thereafter. On the third occasion I came out of the car and went up close to the pump. When the pump started running, the attendant asked if I wanted anything in the snack shop attached to the station. I said no thanks and kept watching. I believed this was an attempt to get me away from the pump.

Once I went to a gas station in the Constant Spring area. An attendant directed me to a pump. It sounded as if gas was going into the tank, but it was air, because a mile up the road the car was out of gas. I telephoned the head office of the company and a supervisor promised to investigate and report back to me. I never heard from her.

Motorists, be on the alert.

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Credibility is crucial to politics