Two decades ago, Ben Clare claimed to have merely signed documents placed before him by a parliamentary clerk without seriously checking the quantity or quality of the furnishings being bought for a government house he occupied.

It turned out that the junior minister approved top-end stuff, costing a wad of money, some of which may have even been overpriced, and that clerk who did the procurement may have been in cahoots with one vendor of the electronic equipment. A mini scandal ensued, much to the embarrassment of the People's National Party (PNP), then recently back in government.

Ed Bartlett is no Ben Clare. There is no suggestion that he wielded an inadvertent or careless pen across a procurement document. Neither is there a suggestion that he broke any procurement rules.

But on the face of it, in the matter of the refurbishing of his office, as highlighted in yesterday's edition of The Sunday Gleaner, Mr Bartlett was guilty of patently bad judgment.

And that is a shame, for the minister, we feel, despite his tendency to overhype results, has done a reasonably good job, in an extremely difficult environment, of maintaining Jamaica's tourism arrival numbers. Three per cent growth is not bad when almost everyone else, who is similarly discounting, has declined.

Symbolic gestures

In the context of Jamaica's fiscal deficit of $60.4 billion, and with the national debt heading towards $1.3 trillion, an expenditure of $8.4 million is relatively insignificant. So, too, we might consider $77,000 for an executive chair so that Mr Bartlett can sit in comfort when he is in Jamaica and in occupation of his office.

But as Mr Bartlett is aware - and as his boss, Prime Minister Golding, sought to preach by keeping a 15-year-old official car and asking government MPs to take a 15 per cent wage cut - there are times when symbolic gestures are important. Such as now, as Jamaica faces a deep economic crisis and the Government is demanding sacrifices all round.

Cash crunch

Of course, Mr Bartlett's spokespersons will insist, with seeming logic, that a makeover of the tourism ministry's office, and the minister's personal suite, was necessary, given the split-off of other portfolio responsibilities when he took over. They will say, too, that the economic crisis was not on the radar when they started the process in May 2008.

The fact, though, is that the crisis has only intensified; it was upon us shortly after Mr Bartlett's party assumed office in September 2007 and was long severe by the time Mr Bartlett's permanent secretary in January of this year was warning staff of the cash crunch being faced by the ministry and "imploring staff to exercise restraint" in spending and the use of resources. The spending on the office makeover ended three months later.

As Dr Jean Dixon, the permanent secretary in the health ministry, suggests, it might make sense for limits to be placed on office renovations - and, we would add, how often they can be done.

This sprucing up of Mr Bartlett's office brings us back to our call for the urgent move of ministries and agencies into the tens of thousands of square feet of empty space in government buildings in downtown Kingston to jump-start the revival of that section of the city and save hundreds of millions of dollars annually in rent, which is the untold part of this story.

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