The decision by the current regime to substantially raise its own salaries has been a disaster that I believe will follow it far into the future. But today I want to focus on a possible way forward.
None of the reasons the regime has proffered for its actions can pass muster and I am tempted to say that although some kind of contrition on its part might indicate that we have passed the era of unresponsive and unvirtuous democracy we inhabited not so long ago, for the most part the government has already shown its hand and no amount of backpedaling will totally erase from the public mind the perception of it as driven by self-interest.
As we go forward the regime needs to realise that notwithstanding the peculiarities our ethnic cleavages bring to the political environment, it is operating within a competitive political system in which its opponents will offer little space for it to rectify these kinds of major errors.
In passing, the latest comment by the president that the increases are necessary to attract quality people to the task of ministering not only reinforces the highly materialistic outlook of his various ministers but begs the question whether there is a belief in the corridors of power that the public will be satisfied with almost any marginally sensible form of words.
How can it be that political operatives who have been campaigning for years and have largely selected themselves for the jobs they now have be categorised with high class managers who had to be carefully recruited and properly paid!
Yet as we proceed in nation building we need to also bear in mind that those modern states that have more or less adopted a more materialistic approach to government service have also usually made some concessions to the traditional standpoint that public service is a duty that usually requires material sacrifice.
One government that comes very close to what appears to be our government’s contention that political operatives must be paid very well if one is to be able recruit the best and prevent corruption must be Singapore. The president and ministers in Singapore are the highest paid political leaders in the world. The president’s annual salary is about US$1.7m; President Obama follows him as a poor second with US$400,000. Ministers are also the highest paid in the world, receiving annual salaries of nearly US$1m.
That said, Singapore has developed quite rapidly and is well positioned on the Transparency International’s corruption index being ranking about seventh. But even there account is given to the fact that public service must also be viewed as a duty that entails some material sacrifice.
Thus in 2011, the government of Singapore established a salary review committee that recommended benchmarking ministers’ salaries to the median income of the top 1,000 Singaporean wage earners with a 40% discount ‘to signify the sacrifice that comes with the ethos of political service’. The review resulted in a 31% reduction of ministerial salaries!
Of course, if you can pay ministers sufficient to make them multimillionaires during their first term of office, they are most unlikely to steal. But findings from a range of studies are inconclusive as to whether higher salaries can reduce corruption, and this must be particularly so where such payments reward those who are politically driven and already relatively well remunerated, as are our ministers. As for codes of conduct, both here and abroad they are a dime a dozen with no significant effect on the level of corruption.
What appears to be more important in dealing with corruption is the establishment of effective control and monitoring systems as well as the enforcement of appropriate sanctions (http://www.transparency.org/files/content/corruptionqas/Salary_top-ups_and_their_impact_ on_corruption_2013.pdf).
In his maiden speech to the National Assembly, President Granger made a promise to establish a Constitutional Offices Commission Bill to periodically review salaries, pensions and other conditions for persons appointed to constitutional offices, including Members of the National Assembly.
At the time this certainly appeared a small but important step in the right direction, for as I have persistently argued in this column, the wringing of hands that takes place each time our political elites gets out of hand can be substantially reduced if we take the time to properly establish institutions that can curtail the negative propensities of the most wayward rather than putting our faith in finding good people.
In an article `Fair pay for public servants’ (SN 8/8/2012) I contended that, ‘It is highly questionable for any government to be given carte blanche to set its own emoluments … and this is even more unacceptable in a divided society where public servants can be seen as supporters to be rewarded or non-supporters to be penalised.’
I pointed out that Trinidad & Tobago has a standing commission that considers remuneration for all senior public sector positions – the president, prime minister, judges, chief executives, etc., and that in its eighth report the commission stated that having reflected on the fundamental principles that guide similar bodies in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, India, Jamaica and Barbados, it had concluded that the following core precepts it follows remain valid:
(i) establishing remuneration that bears fair comparison with current levels of remuneration paid within the private sector for broadly comparable jobs, taking into account differences in other conditions of employment; (ii) providing appropriate levels of remuneration to attract, recruit and retain persons of suitable competence, experience, knowledge, skills and personal attributes to fill positions of very high responsibility and trust; (iii) ensuring appropriate differentials in compensation which take into account significant differences in the levels of responsibility between one office and another; (iv) providing the motivational and intrinsic value which compensation packages should carry generally; and (v) providing compensation packages for top political and managerial offices to promote the efficient delivery of public policies and public management solutions.
So what has happened to the presidential promise which would certainly have been a more transparent, equitable and politically sensible method for dealing with the ministerial increases? The commission would have taken a few months to be established and complete its work, but what’s the great rush? Now, for better or worse, the new increases must prejudice the work of any such future commission.
It appears to me that the regime has unnecessarily courted the ire of the people. Surely, unless it simply makes promises for public consumption, the more studied approach would have been for it to establish the commission, and like Singapore, support the setting of criteria that would achieve the high pay and proper relativities it believes are necessary.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
