Now that the dust is settling on the parliamentary participation issue involving Minister Clement Rohee, the time might be right for us to consider another important aspect of our political administration thrown up by the Linden debacle.
If memory serves me right, we heard from the Acting Commissioner of Police that there has been a long history of ministers dealing directly with senior officers in the Guyana Police Force, and that Minister Rohee has continued that tradition. Since according to Westminster-type rules governing the relationship between ministers and public officials as generally understood, a minister is to give general policy directions, monitor, evaluate and take the necessary action to ensure that the adumbrated policies have been implemented and day-to-day implementation should rest with the most senior public officials, permanent secretaries, chief executive officers, commissioner of police, etc, this admission, though known by many and suspected by all, still raised eyebrows. After all, according to this tradition the minister should work through the commissioner and refrain from bypassing him and dealing with his officials, at least, not without his permission.
Then we heard from Senior Superintendent Clifton Hicken that he did not speak with Minister Rohee on 18th July 2012 when the Linden protesters were shot and killed, and then finally we heard from Minister Rohee that he did speak to the superintendant but only after the shooting!
Our vision of the political bureaucratic relationship is essentially the one that reached us by way of the German sociologist Max Weber and is rooted in the notion of a hierarchically supervised and politically detached public service with the following elements: (1) Politics and policy are separated from administration; thus, politicians make policy decisions and public servants execute these decisions; (2) Public servants are appointed and promoted on the basis of merit rather than party affiliation or contributions; (3) Public servants do not engage in partisan political activities; (4) Public servants do not express publicly their personal views on government policies or administration; (5) Public servants provide forthright and objective advice to their political masters in private and in confidence; in return, political executives protect the anonymity of public servants by publicly accepting responsibility for departmental decisions, and (6) Public servants execute policy decisions loyally, irrespective of the philosophy and programmes of the party in power and regardless of their personal opinions; as a result, public servants enjoy security of tenure during good behaviour and satisfactory performance. (Kenneth Kernaghan, Politics, policy and public servants: political neutrality revisited” Canadian Public Administration 1976)
Kernaghan recognised that the “ideal type” does not exist in practice and that politicians and their political staffers usually are very much involved in issues of management just as bureaucrats are enmeshed in influencing policy, legislation, etc. From theorists and practitioners alike, our view of a clear divide between policy and implementation appears unrealistic and anachronistic.
In relation to the civil service proper, Sir. Michael Quinlan, a distinguished former Permanent Secretary, commenting on this issue for the British House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee in 2006, claimed that “Ministers and Permanent secretaries have in some sense parallel responsibilities. The Permanent Secretary’s responsibilities run to the Minister and are included within his/hers; they do not run separately, aside from the special category of Accounting Officer responsibilities. … I think it incorrect, unrealistic and undesirable to suppose that Ministers “should not [in the sense of ought not] get involved in the actual running of Departments.”
Edward Stewart, a onetime senior bureaucrat in the Canadian province of Ontario in his 1989 “Cabinet Government in Ontario: A View from the Inside” claimed that the belief that at the higher levels of government one can keep political and bureaucratic roles distinct is ‘naive and non-productive.’
The New Zealand Government 2008 Cabinet Manual on the relationship between minister and the public service stated “On a day-to-day basis a Minister will have contact with the senior officials best able to provide the necessary information or advice. Departmental staff and the Minister’s office should keep the chief executive informed, at least in general terms, of any contact between the department and the Minister.”
Outside of the Westminster framework and at the modern practical level, we have been told that President Barack Obama usually has to be assured that the conditions and time are right before he personally signs off on drone strikes. This prompted the Washington Post to make the following comment: “It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. Mr. Obama … insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies … When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.” Of course, we have all seen images of the President and his inner circle in his Situation Room viewing in real time the demise of Osama bin Laden.
What took place in Linden was essentially a political issue; not simply one of policing. Should the minister in charge not have been assessing the situation on a real time basis, thus, for example, being in a position to call off the police if it was necessary? What would have been so wrong with the minister demanding real time updates from senior police on the ground? Indeed, since such reports are quite subjective, would it not have been unwise for him to depend only upon reports coming from the police? Could viewpoints not also have been sought from the regional and town administrations, his own political people and anyone he thought strategically positioned to help him form a more rounded picture of what was taking place?
Instead, what occurred? By his own admission, the minister waited until he heard that protesters had been shot and killed before requesting a situation report from the most senior police on the ground! In my view, this admission, rather than mitigating his action, opens a whole new realm of possible concerns about the timeliness of his intervention! However, I suspect that his reluctance to keep in touch with the persons on the ground or to admit that he had done so could only properly be explained by the tyranny of a conceptual idea – that seeks a clear separation between policy formulation and implementation in public administration – taken too far.
