A ‘pappy show’ worthy of an episode of ’Yes Minister’

Jul 25, 2019 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

A generation ago, a British sitcom captured the essence of the Westminster model of governance and dispensed with the polite fiction that Ministers are indispensable. ‘Yes Minister’ portrayed the attempts of a bumbling over-promoted politician (now Minister) to enact policies and handle crises. Each policy floundered as it met the impermeable ranks of the British civil service; each crisis was handled by civil servants with minimal input from the Minister. The source of the satire holds true wherever the Westminster model persists: Ministers are really just transitory figures at the helm of a permanent structure of government.
The model of a permanent, politically neutral Civil Service derives from our time as a British colony. Patronage, always a feature of the colonial Civil Service, became entrenched post-Independence: much of our public sector has since served as a repository for political acolytes through successive administrations. The result? An Orwellian dystopia: a hopelessly bloated bureaucracy, a chronic shortfall of skill-sets and experience and a corresponding decline of trust in these public institutions and services among the general populace.
Our solution? Two strategies linked to American-style governance have been adopted, perhaps a symptom of our unabashed reverence for all things American. The first is to hire contract workers at inflated salaries (either as an additional layer of patronage and cronyism or to fulfill key tasks or both). The second is an insatiable appetite for ‘capacity building’ in all spheres of government. Presumably the donor agencies prefer to continually fund ‘capacity building’ than to insist that the entire system requires root and branch reform and not just periodic ‘tweaks’ and upgrades.
The current system is therefore an uncomfortable and unworkable hybrid of two competing models of governance from Westminster and Capitol Hill. The bloat extends as far as our Cabinet, now the same size as Brazil’s, with few obvious gains other than an index-linked rise in photo opportunities and travel junkets.
Neither Westminster nor Capitol Hill can be held up these days as infallible models of good governance. However, the ethos of the Westminster model endures in our system of governance. No one is indispensable. No politician, no Minister, no civil servant. All are in place to serve the nation. Further, the politics of division has birthed a precarious situation where minority governments look set to continue indefinitely in Guyana. So no one, no particular party, no interest group, no cohort is assured a lasting grip on power. A plea, therefore, for all involved to adjust their mindsets and get on with the business of governance in a functioning democracy. There is a compelling need for all parties to adhere to due process, to honour the CCJ’s recent rulings and to proceed with gravitas and dignity. What we have at present is a ‘pappy show’ worthy of an episode of ’Yes Minister’.

Yours faithfully,
Isabelle de Caires

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