Robert Buddan

The government is now deciding what programmes to chop from the coming upcoming in the name of fiscal prudence and debt management. Some of these include 'democracy' programmes. We don't usually think of spending on our democracy as a priority, strangely enough, even though there is a general consensus that 'good government' is a prerequisite for development. In the early days of development thinking, the more popular position was that economic development was a prerequisite for democracy. It would produce an educated middle class and modern values that would make democracy possible. But it turned out that development proved much more stubborn to achieve in the developing countries. So, the more current thinking is that corrupt politics and bad government might actually be in the way of development. The new view is that democracy legitimises government and good governance makes government trustworthy. Both of these are necessary for other things to happen, like social peace, civic participation and economic production.

Development planners, budget makers, international aid agencies and donor countries have been slow to fund the connection, between a good democracy and economic development even though many of them make precisely this argument. It is true that the World Bank helps to fund public sector modernisation, but the real financial cost still rests with governments. The Canadian International Development Agency has helped with pilot projects such as parish development committees, but government has to sustain local and community development. The United Nations Development Programme has helped to promote civic dialogue as part of strengthening social trust and peace, but again the sustenance of these programmes lies with government. A people must take responsibility for their democracy and must make sure that balanced budgets do not come at the expense of important democratic and governance programmes under pressure from the same development agencies that put fiscal management first.

CONSTITUENCY DEVELOPMENT

Robinson

Democracy costs a lot and a good democracy costs more. A good democracy does not come cheaply and we have to decide to pay for it. We have talked about a new parliamentary building for a long time. The Government now says that will have to wait till towards the end of its term and at the present rate, the chance of having one even then seems slim. Prime Minister Bruce Golding even complained about possible conflict of interest in 2006 when a company was willing to provide parliamentarians with computers to use for parliamentary work. It costs to run a public education campaign for constitutional reform and to hold referenda on any particular issue, like the Caribbean Court of Justice. It is expensive to hold proper elections with modern voting machines. It takes money to pay parliamentarians, councillors, mayors, jurists, and such critical public servants, and it is easy to cry shame when we discover a former mayor and councillors living in poverty in their old age.

The latest victim of budget cuts is the government's promised Constituency Development Fund (CDF). Parliamentarians are to receive a salary increase this year. At the same time, the CDF was shaved to less than half of the amount promised. The decision undercuts the logic that if we are to pay parliamentarians more we should expect more from them; but that we should also provide them with more resources to make meaningful contributions to the development of their constituencies. The thrust of the last two reports on salary increases for parliamentarians was to improve the performance of parliamentarians by strengthening constituency management organisation (Stone), and erect a new Parliament building (Clarke). Budget cuts undermine these.

Minimising the CDF is symptomatic of many things - item by item costing without seeing how things work interdependently, the low priority given to spending on democracy, and the old view that prudent fiscal management means balancing capital in money terms even at the cost of political capital, social capital, and as most clearly evident, environmental preservation. For instance, the CDF is to fund constituency projects that fit into national development plans prepared with proper technical assistance, submitted as a constituency development plan, and approved by a process, which would be transparent. It is unfortunate that certain sections of the media have happily cheered the cutback dismissing the whole thing as more potential for pork. It is also unfortunate that members of Parliament have acquiesced to the lowered priority given to this programme.

To dismiss the CDF as pork without giving it a chance to prove itself as a properly run programme is not fair. It is insensitive to the children it could feed, the bridges it could repair, the jobs it could create, the community policing it could facilitate, the books it could buy, the emergency surgeries it could help to pay for, the shelters it could provide, the small businesses it could start, and from all of this, the difference it could make to people's lives. As it is, only scaled-down constituency plans will emerge and MPs will have the same old excuse for not doing enough - no resources. The people will remain unhappy with their representatives. They will continue to think that the system only helps the big man and the big financiers of the ruling party. They will continue to see politics as about promises broken.

hiring and planning

The Government could have done better, and still has the chance to. It had set up a unit in the Office of the Prime Minister under Mrs Shahine Robinson to develop and manage the programme. The announcement of the budget cuts came while the unit was still hiring and planning. Robinson was merely asked by Golding to 'sensitise' members of Parliament to the cuts. I think she should have been asked to save the programme in its original conception as much as she could, despite some cuts, and Golding had an obligation to try and minimise these cuts as leader of the party that promised this programme to the electorate.

Robinson and her unit should first sensitise Parliament, the media, and the public to the way that her unit would manage the programme to ensure full transparency and accountability. She must do this to interest other sources of funding from development agencies and the private sector as their contribution to the national development plan. For this, she has to show them her management system and sensitise them to her plans for accountability.

The CDF gets to the heart of representative democracy - members of Parliament representing the interests of constituents. Robinson can either accept her boss' orders and watch representation given low priority or accept her role as MP and head of the CDF Unit to defend the principles of representative democracy by making the CDF an effective means of representing constituents. When the executive, represented by the prime minister and his minister of finance have the power to undercut the role of the MP, then this is more evidence of the power of the prime minister and the dominance of the executive over the legislature, something about which Golding had complained loudly in opposition. Cutting the CDF not only undermines democratic representation, it reinforces some of the worse features of the Westminster system.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm