Seiveright's dangerous proposal: Operation Weed Out the PNP?

Ian Boyne, Contributor

Many senior public servants are hopping mad over G2K President Delano Seiveright's Sunday Gleaner article urging the prime minister to rethink civil-service appointments.

In the article titled 'Malice towards none? Rethinking civil-service appointments', in last week's edition, the president of the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP's) youth affiliate chided his party leader: "Your administration appears to have taken the same 'malice-towards-none' approach as Seaga's. Many argue that this is a flawed position and needs urgent change."

Public servants would be further alarmed to read this follow-up scolding of Party Leader and Prime Minister Bruce Golding: "Upon assuming office in September 2007, your administration continues, to this day, to retain known activists and supporters of the PNP in key positions throughout the civil service and the wider public sector."

The article, first sent as a memo to party leader Golding, informs that one JLP supporter in December emailed G2K, expressing serious concerns "about what he believed to be PNP activists and supporters occupying leading and sensitive posts in the civil service and the wider public sector and have, and are, intent on sabotaging the policies and initiatives of this still-new JLP administration."

The message to G2K was explicit and unmistakable: "Remember that what really matters is not the cost to say goodbye to some people who will never support you. What really matters is the cost to keep them in terms of salary, bad advice, undermining you, leaking information, failure to carry out policy decisions, employing and keeping their friends who also do not support you and making speeches that undermine you."

These are very serious charges.

The G2K president adds that: "Historically, JLP governments do not appear to have a track record of adjusting the senior ranks of the civil service and the wider public sector upon assuming office to be in a position to better govern the nation's state of affairs." He goes on to advise his party leader and our prime minister: "Your administration, however, needs, as a matter of urgency, to seek to make adjustments."

In the past, these words would be uttered in private party circles, among fellow tribalists and in hallowed halls where one would bemoan the burden of civil-service legacy and that wretched, outdated Westminster notion of neutrality.

My generation would not be so proud to be caught expressing such views, let alone to dash off an op-ed piece on this to the leading newspaper in the Caribbean! Give the youth an 'A' for boldness and straight talking! (Someone must be asking the question, "Did someone say that our hope for a detribalised society lay with our youth?")

I know Delano Seiveright. And the tone and tenor of his memo to the prime minister is quite unlike his persona. If you know the young man, you will know that he could hardly be classified as your typical tribalist - aggressive, visceral, loquacious, blindly partisan, unreasoning, bigoted and mean-spirited. Delano is a JLP loyalist, but I have always found him in conversations with me to be cosmopolitan, rational, very open, anything but arrogant and able to criticise his own party.

constrained

In a conversation with me, he revealed that he felt constrained to express views in that memo which were held by not a few young people. So, while not renouncing what he wrote, he made it clear that he was also a conduit. Which is more frightening. For the views represented in that memo to the party leader were not the kind of nuanced, textured and balanced ideas that one would expect from young, fresh minds.

For one, the memo/article was internally inconsistent and blatantly contradictory. The piece castigates Golding for keeping PNP supporters since he was elected and, yet, in the very next sentence says, "Of course, neither I nor G2K in any way support the removal of PNP activists and supporters from government service for purely political reasons." But the whole thrust of the missive was to show how naïve and unthinking Golding was to be keeping his enemies in key positions while he saintly maintains this malice-towards-none, Seaga-esque approach. Silly of him, the youth are saying.

oolish and misguided

This whole "new thinking" by the youth affiliate is premised on the view that the outdated Westminster notion of keeping people in their posts, despite political change, is foolish and misguided, with disastrous consequences - as, apparently, we are seeing with this Golding administration now.

Aside from the fact that that argument easily lends itself to the charge that Labourites are merely seeking excuses for any failing of their administration, it is poorly constructed. In the very next sentence following his disclaimer of old-style victimisation, Seiveright writes in reference to supposed PNP activists and supporters in the public sector: "One should be untroubled as long as one lawfully and diligently carries out their (sic) duties in accordance with the prescribed policies and efforts of the ruling administration."

But Delano does not realise that that very statement is lethal to his entire edifice of what passes for argumentation.

For if these PNP activists and supporters are not lawfully and diligently carrying out their duties in accordance with prescribed policies, obviously there are procedures for getting rid of them, without invoking any notion of political reform of the civil service. If the PNP people are sabotaging you or making life a "nightmare" for you, the very civil-service norms and processes will easily take care of that. Delano should be calling on the PM to ensure that these established procedures, policies and norms are being followed, rather than urging him to search under every bed for PNP spies and saboteurs.

In the memo/article itself there are clear giveaways that the concerns are not just about malfeasance by PNP activists and supporters in the civil service, but about their very presence.

Hear Delano: "The PNP formed governments over and over again for just under 19 consecutive years, between 1989 and 2007. It is no secret that the civil service and the wider public sector increased the staff complements by tens of thousands ... . This followed the immense growth of the civil service under the socialist PNP administrations led by Michael Manley in the 1970s. The Pickersgill Accreditation Committee comes to mind, hence lingering concern about the value of Seaga's stated malice-towards-none approach."

That anyone could question what is, at base, a civil, decent and mandatory minimum conduct is as appalling as it is stunning. What the hell is happening with our youth? What have we done to them? How did they turn out like this? For remember, Delano is not just representing himself. We have to blow the whistle on at least some of our young people, lest the scorn of "malice towards none" becomes the new normal.

Here's another indication that the issue is not just about civil servants who obstruct and act unprofessionally, but with the fear that there are too many PNP people in the civil service, especially in key positions: "Anyone who believes that after close to 19 consecutive years of power by the same administration no changes are necessary in keys areas of the civil service and the public sector is deluding himself." Delano mentions "passively resistant and obstructionist behaviour from some technocrats". I am uncompromising on this: Once there is evidence of this, those people - even if they are Jehovah's Witnesses who are no 'P' -must be removed.

Let us back G2K in insisting that the saboteurs, obstructionists and WikiLeakers of confidential information to the PNP must be removed. (We don't have to remind ourselves that the JLP, in Opposition, was the master of confidential leaks.) This is a matter of integrity. People in the public service who betray trust and who are calling up opposition members of parliament to give them sensitive and classified information should be fired.

There is one major point Delano and his fellow youth don't factor in: Most public servants are survivors. They act in their own narrow self-interest. Believe me, Delano, only a few - a tiny few - put party ahead of their personal interests. PNP public servants want to protect their jobs and, especially when their colour is known, they usually walk the chalk line. So not many will jeopardise their jobs. What you must know, though, Delano, is that when a government becomes unpopular, even its own people will seek to curry-favour with the Opposition and leak information.

The more critical issue with which the youth must concern themselves - and with the utmost urgency - is how we can we attract the best and the brightest to the public sector; how can we galvanise the intellectual capital needed in the public sector to build the kind of capacity needed for this economy to take off. The development literature is unambiguous: An efficient, productive, sophisticated and avant-garde public sector is absolutely critical to economic growth in developing countries. The task is to get the best talent, the best minds, from whichever party or ideological stream, for development.

politically scandalous

It is backward and wasteful, not to mention politically scandalous, to be talking about further reducing and dividing our already inadequate intellectual capital in the public sector by going on a witch-hunt to weed out Comrades. Yes, weed out Comrades who are obstructionist, corrupt, refusing to follow ethical directions and who are leaking information to the PNP. But we are too small a society to be ejecting good, professional people simply because their colour is orange.

And the thing is, there is no significant policy difference between this JLP administration and those of the previous 19 years. It is the same neoliberal capitalist policies and programmes which both have been presiding over under courtesy of the Washington Consensus. Truly, only those Comrades deserving to be fired as blind tribalists and cultists should have a problem working for this administration. Or is the PNP itself saying all ethical public servants should follow Jimmy Moss-Solomon?

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