Golding And The Ship Of State

The Prime Minister’s Budget Speech in a Westminster Parliamentary system is tantamount to the State of the Union address in January by the President of the United States of America. How a government sets priorities and allocates resources reflects the government’s philosophical approach to providing for the needs of the people. In his maiden budget speech as Prime Minister, Bruce Golding opened his remarks with reference to national heroes like Nanny, Bogle and Gordon yet paradoxically closed his speech with a quotation from Winston Churchill, an Englishman with an imperialist disposition. In this regard Golding was indiscriminately embracing Jamaica’s conflicting political heritage of colonial subservience and resistance to oppression.

Jamaica is in desperate need of great leadership and by the end of his first term, the Jamaican people will be able to assess if the Prime Minister has risen to the task. The Prime Minister is very much aware of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the world economy in the nine months that he has had the responsibility of steering the Jamaican ship of state. A small island economy bereft of fossil fuel is vulnerable to the shocks of the international marketplace. Just last year a barrel of oil was selling on the world market for $56.00 and a few days ago the price of oil had jumped to $117.00 per barrel. As the Prime Minister has pointed out, the cost of imported oil is tantamount to 70 percent of Jamaica’s exports. The increase in the oil price has triggered an increase in the island’s inflationary rate. The inflationary rate in Jamaica is running in double digits where in the previous five years, the inflationary rate had been in single digits Compounding the dramatic increase in the price of oil is the massive increase in food staples. Corn, wheat and rice have soared in price and that has triggered riots in Haiti, Egypt, et al. This has meant an increase in the hardship for poor people in the country. The Prime Minister in his presentation to Parliament and to the Jamaican people included a chart that showed that agricultural production over the last two decades had not increased its productive capacity and the country had become more dependent on imported foodstuff.
Taking a page from Michael Manley’s playbook, Golding has emphasized the need for Jamaicans to become more self-sufficient in food so as to insulate ourselves from these international shocks. Both the Minister of Agriculture and the Prime Minister are aware that in a world of open markets, an increase in self-sufficiency can only work if the agricultural sector is transformed into a mode of production where scientific techniques are more effectively applied. As a substitution for a staple, the Minister of Agriculture has exhorted farmers to expand the production of cassava.

Bruce Golding has taken quite seriously the promises made to the Jamaican people during the campaign of 2007 and has made a special effort to translate the Party’s Manifesto into public policy. The tuition charged to students in high schools has been abolished. The JLP promised that user fees at public hospitals would be abolished at the beginning of this fiscal year and despite the budget woes, the user fees have been lifted.

In the 1970s, the JLP under Edward Seaga was intensely critical of the PNP’s commitment to democratic socialism. When the PNP extricated itself from the IMF strictures, the Party had more flexibility to expand social programs. PATH was initiated at the turn of the twenty-first century as something of a safety net for the elderly and the poor in the society. Under the PNP 18 year reign, there was beginning in the 1990s a sharp drop in Jamaicans living below the poverty line. That has been reduced from over 30 percent to 14.3 percent.

Despite those gains, it was Bruce Golding’s JLP that seized the initiative in eliminating fees for high schools and public hospitals. Portia Simpson Miller had coaxed Omar Davies to rescind the hospital fees for children under 18 years. In the budgetary debate that is underway, the opulent General Secretary and representative of Central Manchester, Peter Bunting objected to the JLP’s initiatives on education and healthcare. Bunting’s comments reflected the philosophical confusion rampant in the post-Manley PNP.

Golding demonstrated in his budget presentation that his government is concerned with the plight of the poor even though it was the Buntings of the world who financed his campaign. Golding cited the need to augment the minimum wage and to extend the PATH program to those who are eligible but have not applied for the benefits. The Golding administration has made a modest increase to those receiving pensions and national insurance checks. Simpson Miller also has this passionate commitment to the poor and in her address was critical of the government for not putting people at the center of the budget which the Prime Minister rebutted.

The Prime Minister spent a lot of time focusing on misappropriations by the previous government that now has to be rectified. A case in point, according to the Prime Minister, was the National Housing Trust. Under the PNP, the NHT included inner city housing construction even though the recipients were not contributors to the NHT. Also during the time that Portia Simpson Miller held the position as Prime Minister, she reduced the interest rates on the NHT mortgage loans. Golding has taken the position that non-contributors such as the inner city recipients should not be included in the housing solutions under the NHT rubric.

The Prime Minister’s logic is flawed. He is in his right that the solvency of the NHT is paramount and must be rectified even if that necessitates an increase in interest rates for the contributors. It is Golding’s government that has abolished user fees at public hospitals irrespective of whether the patient is or is not a taxpayer. If the NHT is solvent, there is no reason why the non-contributor cannot be a beneficiary. In any case, the tax consolidation proposal that has been postponed until next year will lead to a consolidation of these distinctive accounts.

The Prime Minister has been instrumental in identifying the dots but the presentation fails to connect the dots. Bruce Golding highlights that 1 percent of the corporations contribute approximately 75 percent of revenues and 75 percent of the corporations contribute 1 percent. The system of tax collection does not encompass all those eligible to be taxed. Enormous numbers of businesses escape contributing to the revenue stream so indispensable to a developing society.

The Prime Minister points out that there are 700 squatter settlements scattered throughout the island. This is a clear indication of the desperate need for housing and the sizeable number of working age folks who have been “lumpenized” by the economic and political system. The Prime Minister throws out the figure that 53,000 students who leave school every year, 38,000 have not accumulated sufficient passes to go on to tertiary education and 25,000 have no passes and are unprepared for the job market. The government plan is to extend the school year system by two years to ensure that all school leavers acquire some level of skill training before leaving school. H.E.A.R.T./NTA will lend their expertise of skill training to the educational system.

Most disappointing about the Prime Minister’s speech is his failure to develop a comprehensive anti-crime strategy. The speech includes the government’s commitment to the modernization of the justice system, an initiative started under the PNP. Prime Minister Golding indicated that legislation would be submitted for an independent agency to investigate police abuses. In a country with one of the highest homicide rates in the world, a Prime Minister who aspires to greatness failed to outline a comprehensive strategy to deal with the homicide epidemic.

If the Prime Minister is to lead, he will have to break down the institutionalized compartmentalization that invariably thwarts tackling effectively problems that transcends bureaucratic boundaries. Curbing police excesses and modernizing the justice system are essential ingredients of a comprehensive anti-crime strategy. The two year extension of the high school system should be integrated into a comprehensive anti-crime strategy. After returning from the emergency summit in Trinidad and Tobago, called because of the urgency of the crime problem in the region, the Prime Minister gave short thrift to the new course of action that the new government would take in strengthening the social order of the society.

Bruce Golding has stated that he is not interested in fame or the accumulation of wealth but his desideratum is to ensure that the young man with the gun will dispense with his tool and have a smile on his face. From his 2008 budget, it is obvious that the Prime Minister not only identifies with the immeserated but has put in place programs to improve their material lot. But much more is required at this juncture. Mr. Golding has got to move beyond sentiment and identify where is Jamaican society vis-à-vis globalization and once he has connected the dots, then a comprehensive approach to economic and political development can be articulated that will capture the imagination of the Jamaican people. At the end of his term, we will be able to assess the leadership prowess of Jamaica’s eighth Prime Minister.

 

Reproductive Health In The Search For Development

CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK

The size and distribution of population were of major concern. Would the earth’s resources be sufficient to support the increasing numbers and would the urban drift of population create mega cities that could not provide the basic services needed for a decent life? But of even greater concern was the evidence that most of the increase in population was taking place in the developing countries, which by definition were less able to support it. The developing countries were into a vicious spiral of increasing numbers that were a cause of and contributed to under-development as measured by lack of economic growth. But in addition, it did not escape the Conference that environmental degradation was an almost natural consequence of the increased population in the poor countries of the South. Thus development as seen both in terms of sustainability of environmental resources and economic growth would be compromised by increased population, hence the emphasis on fertility control.

The Conference set out 14 guiding principles which as was to be expected contained the affirmation of the entitlement to the rights and freedoms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As was done at the Rio Conference a few years before, it put human beings at the center of concerns for sustainable development and affirmed the right to that development. The Principles also spoke to the right to health as the “right to an adequate standard of living for themselves and their families, including adequate food, clothing, housing water and sanitation”.

But the Cairo Conference was a landmark event and has shaped the work and discourse of family planning all over the world because it went beyond considering development in the context of demography. It recognized and advocated the rights of women to sexual and reproductive health. As Thoraya Obaid, the current Executive Director of UNFPA put it in a speech marking the tenth anniversary of Cairo:

“The Cairo Program of Action helped governments to move away from a narrow focus on family planning to a new concept of sexual and reproductive health throughout the life cycle. The Cairo agenda changed the international debate about population from human numbers to human beings”.

Reproductive health was defined as follows:

“A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes. Reproductive health therefore implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so. It also includes sexual health, the purpose of which is the enhancement of life and personal relations”.

But the Principle which in my view has had the greatest resonance and guides much of the work in this area states:

“Advancing gender equality and equity and the empowerment of women, and the elimination of all kinds of violence against women, and ensuring women’s ability to control their own fertility, are cornerstones of population and development –related programmes. The human rights of women and the girl child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights.”

Thus reproductive health is seen as including healthy sex as important in and of itself as well as health in relation to matters of reproduction. Reproduction cannot be the only objective of sexual health. Sexual health is important for our well being and sexuality must be seen as an essential part our humanity. In addition, the empowerment of women and their ability to control their fertility through access to sexual and reproductive health services represent the main route to control of the population size which is seen as critical for development as it is defined primarily in economic terms. This focus has remained, as at the Cairo plus 10 UN Conference the relevance and importance of the concepts of Cairo were reaffirmed.

The World Health Organization defines five core aspects of reproductive and sexual health care; improving antenatal, perinatal, postpartum and newborn care; providing high quality services for family planning, including infertility services; eliminating unsafe abortion; combating sexually transmitted infections including HIV, reproductive tract infections, cervical cancer and other gynecological morbidities; and promoting sexual health. I have always questioned why these services include no mention of the sexual health problems that affect men, as I presume that good sexual health is as important to men as it is to women.

The second major event was the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals five years ago by the United Nations as the benchmark against which the world would measure progress towards the kind of development that in the words of Eric Williams has the face of man. The first of these is the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger. As the Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan would say:

“The Millennium Development Goals, particularly the eradication of poverty and hunger cannot be achieved if questions of population and reproductive health are not squarely addressed. And that means stronger efforts to promote women’s rights and greater investment in education and health, including reproductive health and family planning.”

(Sir George Alleyne is Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and a former Director of the Pan American Health Organization in Washington. The above are excerpts from a speech delivered in Port of Spain on the 50th anniversary of the Trinidad and Tobago Family Planning Association.)