Earl M. Bartley, Contributor
LEADERS THE world over often have 'kitchen cabinets'. These are generally informal groups of very trusted advisers and confidants who function outside the formal administrative structures in providing advice and direction to presidents and prime ministers.
As the name kitchen cabinet suggests, these individuals are often friends with whom the leader has coffee or drinks in the privacy of his home or office as they mull over problems. They may be elected officials or state officials, or just friends and associates from the leader's past and present endeavours. The main ingredient of these relationships is that the leader respects and values the advice of these individuals and has faith and confidence in their loyalty.
National Housing Trust chairman and managing director of the Jamaica Development Bank, Mr. Kingsley Thomas and chairman of the Urban Development Corporation as well as director of several other Government bodies, Dr. Vincent Lawrence, are two of the most trusted members of Prime Minister Patterson's kitchen cabinet. In the view of many, this Kitchen Cabinet runs the country in terms of deciding important policy priorities what is to be done, when and where.
It is not that the Cabinet and other decision-making structures of government do not matter. Mr. Patterson is noted for his consultative approach and would hardly turn his back on a source of valuable advice. But as the recent discussions about whether to cut or not cut the public sector workforce indicates, the key communication regarding the inclination of the Government did not come from Finance Minister Omar Davies, but from Mr. Kingsley Thomas in a radio interview arguing that the more worthwhie course to reducing public expenditure was to reduce interest rates and there were no layoffs.
In their skills and personalities, the lawyer, the development banker, and the engineer almost have a synergistic harmony. Though the buck stops with Mr. Patterson and his name will headline the title page of the history of the past 13 years, given the closeness of Dr. Lawrence and Mr. Thomas to the Prime Minister, and their extensive official and unofficial responsibilities, this troika, probably, has played a key role in defining the tone and character of governance over the past 13 years and the course of Jamaica for better or worse. As accountable public officials, a preliminary historical evaluation might therefore be useful, considering that like Mr. Patterson these two men might be coming to the end of their active public lives.
THE DEVELOPMENT BANKER
Mr. Kingsley Thomas is a gentle giant with a self-effacing charm and earnestness. Like a true development planner he is driven more by the idea and the application required to transform vision into reality, and ultimately, he would like to be remembered for having done great things for his country.
In his substantive position as chairman of the National Housing Trust (NHT) since 1993, it can be said that he has not dropped the ball. Inheriting one of the more well-run public sector organisations in Jamaica and with a ready source of revenues, Thomas has more than doubled the number of housing benefits from 40,000 mortgages in 1993 to 90,000 at the end of 2003. His predecessors had introduced measures such as the expansion of the NHT product line to include mortgage finance for land acquisition, and have over the years increased loan limits and reduced mortgage interest rates. Mr. Thomas has improved upon many of these directions. But in addition, he has made it easier for two or three persons to acquire property they might not have been able to afford singly by pooling their mortgages. His other notable achievement was the introduction of computer technology that allowed NHT customers to service their mortgages at any branch island-wide -the so-called "on-line, real time servicing".
As Chairman of the Agricultural Credit Bank since 1989, Kingsley Thomas has been far less successful. His lending policies have lacked vision and strategic direction. It is true that a banker mainly lends according to the projects that are presented for financing. But a State development bank should lead in the direction of Govern-ment priorities. For much of the 1990s the Government has emphasised domestic food crop production, tree crop establishment and agro-processing. These priorities however, are nowhere reflected in ACB lending, which have seen loans for domestic food crops decline from $35 million in 1993 to less than $7 million in 2002. And while loans for export crops have increased, the main beneficiary has been the traditional sink-hole of sugar, though citrus and coffee production have also received notable assistance. Only since the merger of ACB and the National Development Bank (NDB) in 2000 to form the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) has agro-processing become a significant part of the loan portfolio of the DBJ, which continues to be an insignificant lender to small business.
Thus there is little in Kingsley Thomas' performance as Chairman of the NHT or DBJ that would elevate him above the averagely competent Jamaican public sector manager of the past or present. Maybe this is why he is now trying to memorials his contribution in block, steel and asphalt - in the construction of Emancipation Park and Highway 2000. But a beautiful park does not a great development planner make. While Highway 2000 has so many questions about its financial viability, not to mention its practical necessity, that not even the international reputation of Bouygues has enabled it to obtain financing for the road.
What is worse, the method of sub-contracting which will see some $8.5 billion of taxpayers money being spent outside the purview of the National Contracts Commission, stigmatises the programme. One hopes that if TransJamaica/Bouygues fails to obtain financing from the Inter-American Development Bank, it's 10th international effort in that direction, the Government will have the good sense to terminate the concession as provided for in the Concession Agreement. It hardly makes sense for poor Jamaicans to be borrowing and underwriting loans to foreigners to make money off of us, for doing work we could do ourselves.
THE ENGINEER
American crime movies often have a scene of a good and a tough cop interrogating a suspect. The good cop tries to encourage the suspect to confess by attempting to win him over with a friendly empathetic approach. The tough cop uses threats, intimidation and bluster. There is a similar undercurrent in the style and approaches of Dr. Vin Lawrence and Kingsley Thomas.
When I read in the UDC's promotional booklet 'Making Development Happen' that the "UDC has provided the Jamaican people with attractive and vibrant living, working and recreational environments" I sat in bewilderment wondering where were these places? The cities and townships that I know in Jamaica are mostly threadbare and decaying and those that the UDC has renovated have a stunted 1940's look as if trapped in time and prospects.
It is not that the UDC has done nothing. Its renovation of Dunn's River Falls is excellent work. Mandela Park and Half-Way Tree renovation is good, and the UDC's work in building hotels -Pegasus, Sans Souci, Hedonism II, Negril Beach - and in supporting the tourism industry, has been outstanding.
With an assets base of $6 billion and 300 employees the UDC is not the largest public sector entity. But given its broad mandate, the UDC is the most monolithic of all departments in the Jamaican State, reaching into many ministries to function as their construction managers. In the typical year it supervises billions of dollars worth of contracts funded by the Jamaican Government, international lending agencies and commercial banks.
The UDC builds primary infrastructure like roads, bridges, drains and piers; secondary infrastructure such as schools, housing schemes and hospitals; and engages in tertiary development of commercial and retail space and hotels. Since 1987 the Agency has operated off the budget, and turned a profit of $250 million on its operations in 2000. Its income is derived from rental property, land sales and very significantly from investments in government paper, which accounted for 27 per cent of its income in 2000.
Complaints against Chairman Lawerence over the years have been wide ranging. In 1997 the CG complained that the UDC issued some $2 billion for the renovation of the three hospitals to one contractor without competitive bidding. In the most recent Auditor-General Report the UDC is cited for three violations of the rules of competitive tender, and in another instance for administering a $1.9 billion school building programme without evidence of parliamentary approval.
No entity spending and overseeing such large expenditures of public funds can operate without the most scrupulous transparency and close parliamentary, not simply, ministerial monitoring.
THE LAWYER
Despite his consultative approach, Mr. Patterson is known for his inscrutable demeanor. One never truly knows what he is thinking or feeling, and many have observed that not even on TV does he seem to make eye contact with the viewer.
Does it conform to Mr. Patterson's legal scruples, that the $15 million ceiling on public expenditure requiring Cabinet approval has been converted into a stepping-off floor from which hundreds of millions can be spent on sub contracts without Nat Contracts Commissions recommendation? If not, why has he failed to rectify it?
Mr. Patterson as I mentioned in another article, has improved the physical infrastructure in some areas and made many consumer goods more widely available, but his regime has failed the fundamentals of employment creation, growth and community development. It is disappointing that three of our highest ranking state officials whose disciplines and positions should have enabled them to have a more significant impact on community development should have presided over the social disintegration of many of our communities.
What melds the troika together? Friendship, ambition, shared vision, mammon? I am not sure. Ultimately, Mr. Patterson and his close associates will have to deal with the Administration's persistent sub-par performance on the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index. Maybe like the British and the Americans, about to investigate their intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we too might some day have to investigate that perception of the Patterson regime as a matter of historical and moral necessity.
Earl M. Bartley is an economist and businessman. You can send your comments to adapapa@cwjamaica.com
