BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, May 19, 2010 (Labour Secretariat) - Dr. Neville Duncan, professor of political science at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, has issued an austere message to the government and people of St. Kitts and Nevis to be “frugal and prudent in spending”, while challenging them to step up their game in being globally competitive.
“Before you do anything you need to diagnose and accept the diagnosis. No medical doctor will prescribe medicine without a careful diagnosis. No government will prescribe a remedy without careful diagnosis of the situation,” he said.
Speaking at the 78th Annual Labour Party Conference at the St. Kitts Marriott Resort on May 16, Professor Duncan, challenged government and people to “become super efficient and effective in domestic governance”, which he chose as his theme as guest speaker.
Against the backdrop of the global economic recession, Professor Duncan, who is Jamaican, said that efficiency and effectiveness in domestic governance are “the only ways the country is going to weather the storms that lie ahead”.
Predicting that the present economic global crisis will last for about 10 years, he said that one must “look to be careful, to be thoughtful, to be productive, to be supportive of governmental efforts and to ensure that your personal arrangements are going to be such that they last and keep you alive and well in another 10 years or so”.
Professor Duncan said effectiveness lies in the production of desired results which comes from the ability or asset that delivers production capability.
Quoting Albert Einstein, he said “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”.
The esteemed professor said that he did not want to present a picture of gloom and doom, like a preacher speaking about the Apocalypse but that he had to be realistic.
The US economy is a bubble economy with six major bubbles, Professor Duncan said. Once those six unsustainable bubbles had burst, they can’t be put back together again like Humpty Dumpty, he said, referring to the US economic crisis that threw the world into the economic crisis it is now.
Professor Duncan said these six bubbles include real estate, private debt, the decline in value of US dollar, the stock market, discretionary spending and the US government debt.
If the Labour Party is to remain relevant, it “must reinvent itself, its purpose, its vision,” he said, and strengthen and protect its social and economic gains. This he contends requires discipline and proper management.
“We have to ensure social security and physical security,” Professor Duncan said.
Social development and sustainable economic development go hand in hand, he said.
He challenged the government to be on guard against corruption.
“When a party is in its second, much less its fourth term in office, much administrative and political behavior that deviates from accepted norms begins to look normal,” he said.
“We have to stamp out all vestiges of political corruption. Corruption humiliates the ordinary citizen, slows social progress, hampers economic development and drives up the prices of products and services,” Professor Duncan added.
Transformation of the public sector is crucial and output must measure up and exceed input, he said.
“We know from our experiences with the public sector, here or in the world, that the time that it takes in producing and developing output is usually long, uncertain and unpredictable. The quality of output which is produced is not always of the highest standards and is uneven and variable. Transparency and accountability are not clear,” Professor Duncan said.
