Power does strange things to office-holders. When they are sitting on the opposition benches they see with great clarity the need for transparency and accountability; they promote the virtues of the meritocratic state, criticising nepotism and patronage, and promise value for money to taxpayers should they ever be voted into government. And then they do get into government, and a selective amnesia sets in.
And power does something else too. When a new government takes the reins, it is attuned to the views of the people, in addition to being more disposed to listen to its critics than the one it replaced. Eventually, of course, it will become increasingly hard of hearing, the last administration being a case in point, since it was completely deaf by the time it vacated office.
APNU+AFC came in on the wings of great hope, assurances of accountability, integrity, etc, and some reckless promises about what it would accomplish in its first one hundred days. Two of those promises related to pensions and public servants’ pay, and there was an expectation in the case of the latter, that these would be raised by 20%, although Finance Minister Winston Jordan told this newspaper in May this year that the new government was hoping for an increase of 10%. In the event, what was managed was a minimum salary in the public service of $50,000 a month, and 5% for everyone above that plus $5,000 monthly. The pensions increase too, did not come near to meeting what had been hoped for.
The population swallowed this, since there was some understanding that this was a budget which had to be produced at short notice, it was already late in the year, and that there had been no knowledge during the election campaign of what would be possible financially speaking. The assumption was too that there would be more generous treatment for these categories further down the line. So when stories began circulating in July that the cabinet intended to award itself a substantial raise in salaries, there was a public outcry. It obliged Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman to assure citizens that there would be no “astronomical” pay increases for ministers, and that what was under review was how to differentiate the pay which the various posts should attract, such as those of junior ministers, vice-presidents, etc.
Well that seemed reasonable enough, and the clamour subsided. But now, barely two months later, Minister of State Joseph Harmon told the media on Tuesday that ministers of government were to receive a 50% salary increase. He has run into a blizzard of criticism which has not been mitigated by Mr Harmon’s own ill-judged comments on the matter. He said he would make no “apologies” for it, and that the ministers “deserve[d] it.” He appeared, by implication to suggest that ministers of government should not have to accept salaries lower – or much lower – than those they had earned in the private sector, describing them as “quality” people.
It was what he said thereafter, however, which has caused him the greatest problems: “You cannot have a situation like in the PPP where they were prepared to accept low salaries because they were thiefing money all over the place … our ministers will have to sign to a code of conduct … so we have to pay people well if you want them to perform.” Are we to assume that Mr Harmon is implying that the ministers will only be honest if they are paid more? If that is indeed the intent of his words, then they simply shouldn’t be ministers at all, since the first qualification for the post should be that they can be trusted implicitly with the nation’s resources whatever their salary levels.
As for the oft-mentioned code of conduct for ministers, as was pointed out in our Wednesday report, it has not materialised as yet, and, it might be added, no one knows when it will be.
Perhaps the ministers do deserve a raise, as the Minister of State said, but they do not deserve a healthy increase more than the teachers, medical personnel, public servants and a host of other categories of workers in state employ. This is a low-wage economy, and what a cabinet member is paid has to be seen in relation to that. In any case, even if the cabinet members do deserve the increase, what is the inordinate rush, especially after Minister Trotman had led everyone to believe it wouldn’t happen soon? And as for those directing the affairs of government being “quality”, we do not pay ministers according to their assumed levels of competence; for obvious reasons in no need of explication, they are paid standard rates, quality or non-quality.
Then there is the vexed question of comparisons with the private sector, or what the ministers might have been earning before they came into government. Cabinet salaries in this country have never been on a par with what might be expected in the private sector, but it has always been understood that the word ‘service’ in public service has (or should have) real meaning. In other words, you choose the route of becoming a minister on the understanding that the remuneration you will receive may well be less than that to which you are accustomed, and if you are not prepared to live with that, then as said above, you choose some other path in life.
The problem is that this government came into office having cultivated the belief among the electorate that their purpose in life was to serve, and that the people’s interest came first. Are we to believe that after less than six months in harness they are already so out of touch with the public and so deaf to criticism they can afford to reveal that they are the ones in reality who come first, and not the people?
And has their vision already been so obscured that they could not see there would be recriminations when this duplicity was exposed? Or is it that they see but they just don’t care? If so, then they are no different from their predecessors, except that in the coalition’s case the corrosive effect of power seems to be starting to afflict them rather early in their term.
This government is under great scrutiny not just from the opposition, which in any case has little credibility, but from its own supporters and those who could be described as perhaps sympathetic to it. In addition, it has come into office at a time when there is a certain modest reinvigoration of civil society which is interested in transparent, accountable, equitable and just government. Taken in conjunction with other acts in relation to appointments and lack of consultation, the cabinet pay issue has opened the administration to accusations of a significant gap developing between promises and delivery. As things stand, much of the most trenchant criticism of the coalition’s decision to raise the pay of cabinet members is coming from quarters it probably did not quite anticipate. It should take that as a warning and adjust itself accordingly by putting the increases on hold.
