Governance…What’s our score?

By G.A. Dwyer Astaphan

The panelists were Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Sam Condor; President of the OECS Bar Association and former Attorney General of St. Kitts & Nevis, Mr. Tapley Seaton, QC; and Crown Counsel and Deputy Clerk of the National Assembly, Ms. Jehan Williams. The moderator was Ms. Azilla Clarke, Government Community Liaison Officer.

I was heartened to see two leading figures of opposing political views participate on the panel. Hopefully, by the next elections there’ll be debates (issues-based debates conducted vigorously, but decently and respectfully) between competing candidates and party leaders.

That would be a giant step in our journey towards good governance and democracy. And it would help greatly to lift the standard of debate in the Parliament, on the political platform, on the streets, and on the radio talk shows throughout the country.

Meanwhile, I’d like to see a follow-up discussion with Dr. Timothy Harris, Mr. Mark Brantley, Mr. Patrice Nisbett and Mr. Shawn Richards or Mr. Eugene Hamilton on the panel.

Towards the end of the session, I asked the panelists how they rated St. Kitts & Nevis in terms of governance, on a scale of 0-10.

Mr. Condor gave us a 6.999, Mr. Seaton a 4.0, and Ms. Williams a 5.5, making for an average of 5.5. Not a great score by any means.

One person present said that all of us must work harder to improve our governance, that we’re just 27 years old and that we’re on a journey. I agree. But whereas that person might believe that, after 27 years of nationhood, we’re on a journey towards good governance, I believe that we’re on a journey in the opposite direction.

And this isn’t because I am a naysayer. It’s because of the compelling evidence which is seen, heard and felt, day in and day out, by the best and most qualified judges of good governance in St. Kitts & Nevis; that is to say, the people who live here.

One person was tough on the media, and on the content of talk radio, probably unmindful of the fact that the quality of debate in a nation is a function of the intellectual and social development, and the maturity, of its people, and that a major responsibility in this regard lies in the hands of government and its leaders, who are expected to play a front-running role in setting standard and tone, and in inspiring the nation. And that isn’t happening.

Governance is about the way in which authority of a country is exercised.

At the heart of it is the state’s obligation to ensure that respect and protection are given to people’s fundamental rights and freedoms.
 
Now, while none of us can deny that these rights and freedoms do exist, we’re nevertheless aware of the consequences which we can face if we choose to exercise them. Let’s be honest.

For example, I know a mature, landless, Kittitian woman who has been applying for a house lot for years. She has enough money to pay for the land and to build her house. All she wants is the land. But she has two problems: (1) she won’t beg a politician or anyone else for a piece of land, especially in her own country; and (2) decision makers have said that “she ain’t one of us”.

Imagine that! A foreigner comes here and becomes “one of us”, especially in certain cases, regardless of how ‘wutless’ he or she may be, but a person whose navel string is buried or who is a citizen by descent isn’t necessarily “one of us”.

And on the issue of citizens by descent, I’d bet that there’s a list that’s grown to 1,000 persons who’ve been waiting for years, in some cases over ten years, to receive their citizenship papers so that they can proceed to invest here and/or otherwise enjoy their rights as citizens. Why are they being treated the way they are?

How can anyone claim good governance when governmental power is used to marginalize and punish law-abiding citizens, or when there is plain old inefficiency and, in the process, social and economic harm is brought upon the country?

Meanwhile, some people haven’t applied for anything, yet they’re marked for neglect and punishment. And I’m speaking, not only of non-supporters, but also of Government supporters who may have opened their mouths in protest or may have made a comment that might have been misconstrued or willfully distorted by a ‘news carrier’ looking to curry someone’s favour.

No wonder so many people choose to say nothing. They’re intimidated. Even a portion of the media seems to be intimidated.

It happened between 1980 and 1995, and it’s still happening, manifesting a leadership arrogance and intolerance of criticism and scrutiny, which make good governance impossible.

I’ve been known to criticize too. And my reward for that is, not only are my public comments not to be aired on state-owned media, but some characters are on the Internet urging people to boycott a little enterprise in which I have an interest. So because I exercise my fundamental freedom of expression, food mustn’t be on my table or a roof over my head? We shall see!

So yes, there are fundamental rights and freedoms, but there are also consequences. And when the fear of consequences prevents people and, it seems, a portion of the media, from exercising these rights and freedoms, there can be no good governance.

Also at the heart of good governance are transparency and accountability in Government. So where are the Integrity in Public Life Bill, introduced nearly 15 years ago and yet to be passed, and the Freedom of Information Bill? With such legislation, the public would find out about consulting, real estate, trading, broadcast, financing and other entities and transactions, and about the financial status of persons in public life.

I heard one man in leadership say that if such legislation is to be brought in, “count me out”! Which is exactly what the people of this country need to do: count him, and the others who think and act like him, out!

What follows is a list of actions or omissions by the government. You decide whether or not they demonstrate good governance.

1. Loss of 9% of its shares in the National Bank about 10-11 years ago, getting nothing in return.
2. Waiting until only now to develop alternative energy supplies.
3. Ignoring concerns voiced years ago concerning the legality and safety of British American’s annuity scheme. Citizens have lost $130 million, our worst man-made financial catastrophe in history.
4. Running up a national debt of well over $2 billion and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 180%, the third highest in the world, with all institutions now under intensive care. Meanwhile, 4,700 acres of public land are tied up as security to the National Bank for the government’s debt, so we’re not land rich. And we await that Bank’s delayed financial statements.
5. Swelling up the public sector payroll to over 6,000 employees to gain political favour, at massive expense in terms of money and efficiency to the taxpayers of this country. And now they’re being sent home in droves, plunged as we are in this financial, fiscal and economic mess. (By the way, I am getting some vibes about some alleged ‘tiefing’ at the Port and about defects in the separation package being offered to Port workers. We’ll see).
6. Waiting, for political reasons, until now when we are in a shrunken economy, to introduce VAT, when it could and should have been done as early as 2002. Government is trying to extract more money from the people at a time when the people have less money. That’s the key barometer of the fiscal dilemma that we’re in.
7. Engaging a single company to do all of its road work allegedly on contracts with no bills of quantities, no bids and significant overruns.
8. Allegedly inflating the price of a particular contract so that the extra money could be paid on to an overseas creditor of a friend. If this is true, a criminal investigation is required.
9. Granting a developer a deferral (although the developer was not a hotel operator) of Hotel Accommodation Tax, which, in reality, meant an exemption, and which has caused a loss to the Treasury in excess of $50 million. Then later refusing the request of another applicant for the same concession while the deferral continued, and still to this day continues. We shall see what happens to it after November 1st.
10. Presiding over a struggling tourism industry in which there is no clear and productive marketing plan, so 400 hotel rooms in St. Kitts are now occupied by students (thereby seriously jeopardizing home owners who need to rent their apartments to students in order to maintain their mortgages); three major hotels are up for sale; and stay-over visitor arrivals from North America are down by over 15% thus far this year (following a big decline last year), while Jamaica, Bahamas, Barbados, St. Lucia and others are enjoying 21% increases. St. Lucia is now introducing a Destination Specialist Program for travel agents, something which we had done years ago, but which was apparently laid to rest.
11.  Granting a company a five-year worldwide exclusive contract to market and administer the Sugar Industry Diversification Fund’s Citizenship Program, and agreeing to pay that company 10% of all of Government’s revenue under the Program in addition to the fees which the company would get from its clients.
12. Allegedly granting a company the exclusive right to market 191 homes that are being built by Social Security which, last time I checked, belonged to all of us, not to the PM or his little cabal.
13. Allegedly granting a security contract at the Port to a new firm owned by three close insiders, with no invitations for bids from the private sector security community and no effort to provide the extra work for police and other government security personnel in search of extra money.
14.  The costly White Elephants of White Gate, La Vallee and Potato Bay.
15. The creation of what in effect is a separate principality at the Southeast Peninsula.
16.  Failing to put our agricultural land to optimal use and through it to empower our people as food producing and processing entrepreneurs.
17. Allowing friends to run up hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, in debt to the government, and protecting them from jail while small fries like Brother Bumpy (he had the “It’s Working” stickers on his truck too, you know) sit in jail for a $3,000.00 debt.
18. Misusing and abusing the state media and treating it as the private property of the Prime Minister and the ruling Party.
19. Failing to ensure that only people who live in a constituency are allowed to vote there; failing to correct blatant electoral boundaries’ discrepancies; encouraging a situation in which voter registrations are allowed to ‘commute’ between St. Kitts and Nevis so as to achieve certain, desired results in local and Federal elections; retaining the unfair provision in the Constitution whereby Commonwealth citizens residing here for a year are allowed to register to vote (what stake can 100 plus students at Windsor University have in our elections?); retaining the Bryant Clause in the Constitution; failing to introduce devolution and Constitutional change that are necessary, and in some cases, relatively easy to effect (a 2/3rds majority vote of elected parliamentarians); etc..
20. Declaring that our Federation will join the proposed OECS Economic Union in January 2011, without holding a referendum on it.
21. Failing to build and upgrade police stations and other security facilities and to improve conditions of work for the relevant agencies. Look at the Police Station at Dieppe Bay that has been under construction for years, and still is far from finished, while the one at Tabernacle has not even started. Ask the Mexican government, which gave us the money, if that’s good governance. Meanwhile, the government can’t afford to maintain the Coast Guard vessels, yet every minute the Prime Minister is on a plane, spending money that could be put to better use on the people’s behalf.
22. The pressure that was placed, unnecessarily and unfairly, on the Constitution and the people last year during the costly court shenanigans, when the election should have been called with proper boundary reallocations, and be done with.

What score do you give the government for good governance on a scale of 0-10, with 0 being the lowest? Whatever your score is, say it, and live it. Don’t be muzzled. Free up yourself and your country. Demand good governance.