The Gleaner has for some time been waging a dogged, relentless, even fierce campaign for a radical shake-up of Jamaica's public bureaucracy, including significant downsizing. It stepped up the ante this week in a series of front-page editorials titled, 'A Call to Action'.

The Gleaner began its series last Sunday with a 'Do it or leave' editorial, in which it said that "today our country is adrift and confused" and, controversially, that "this failure is primarily the result of public bureaucracy that has failed to perform, is managerially incompetent and lacking in accountability". It then lashed "anachronistic notions" such as security of tenure for pubic servants, saying it should be dispensed with as we declare a state of "emergency on this matter".

The Gleaner returned to the issue of Wednesday in another front-page editorial, titled 'Let's suspend security of tenure now'. It said "saving Jamaica" required strong leadership and "an urgent overhaul of the public bureau-cracy". The siren call by The Gleaner has been getting louder, and as one of the most influential institutions in the country, its positions cannot be casually dismissed.

economic development

But the issue of job cuts in the public sector - which has to be one area of reform - illustrates the dilemmas of economic development. The figures speak clearly: Of a total budget of $561 billion, $325 billion is for debt servicing and $150 billion to pay salaries, pensions, travelling/subsistence, leaving only $79 billion to spend on the people. The two political parties are at one that the debt must be paid. So, if the budget deficit is to be financed without excessive taxation and borrowing, there must be cuts and, therefore, job cuts and other cost-saving measures must be adopted. This seems logical.

But this is Jamaica. Why would the Opposition People's National Party be eager to sit down with the Government to engage in public-sector reform, which is likely to result in job cuts and inevitable pain, when that provides them with a golden opportunity to whip up emotions against 'this wicked Golding Government' which promised jobs, jobs, jobs and now come with cuts, cuts and cuts? It's raw politics. And this has been one of the reasons why Jamaica has not grown over decades. It was the reason referenced by both former prime minister Edward Seaga and People's National Party Member of Parliament Peter Phillips at a Gleaner Editors' Forum last week.

retarded growth

A view of Singapore from the river, as seen November 12, 2006. - File

One of the major reasons for our retarded economic growth is the high level of partisanship, tribalism and factiousness which exists, and our failure to broker political agreement on key national issues. Just as we have bipartisan agreement on debt before dishonour, so we should be able to find agreement on other matters which simply make economic sense.

Even if the Government gives every indication that it is not going after job cuts first in its reform programme, but is looking generally to improve efficiency, productivity, etc., the Opposition is still unlikely to throw its full support to the process once it is seen that political mileage can be gained from distancing itself from the process.

Richard Byles and others compare Jamaica with little Barbados and wonder incredulously why Barbados is way ahead of Jamaica, but I recommend just one paper to them: Economist Havelock Brewster's Social Capital and Development: Reflections on Barbados and Jamaica. Very enlightening paper.

Barbados was able to weather a period of intense economic crisis because it was able to broker a social partnership where interest groups made sacrifices in the interest of the nation, while we have been talking about a social partnership for years without being able to sign one piece of paper. That tells a story. It gives you a major clue as to why Jamaica has not been able to grow for four decades.

It is not just an issue of the economic and technical competence of successive political administrations why we have not grown. It is about a political culture low on social capital and one in which the short term and the expedient trump everything else. It is the same reason which will almost certainly doom any new agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The success of the new IMF agreement will largely be dependent, not on economics, but on cultural and political factors. If we are not able to see how the common good will be adversely affected unless we coalesce around certain things, then the IMF agreement, however brilliantly negotiated, will fail.

Peter Phillips, one of our sharpest thinkers and most level-headed members of the political class, told the Editors' Forum that preoccupation with short-term electoral objectives over the longer-term development cycle was a major reason we have not grown over the last four decades. We had a problem with growth before Omar Davies took over as minister of finance, and we have continued to have a problem nearly three years after he was ousted. Let's not focus in the wrong areas.

It is good that a healthy debate on economic alternatives and strategies has begun in earnest in the media. Peter-John Gordon wrote a fine piece on interest-rate policy published in last Sunday's Gleaner, and Claude Clarke continues his important dialogue on economic issues, even if it's essentially the same points repeated. His is an important perspective. The Gleaner's page-one editorials have been calling people to action and debate on the critical issues, thus fulfilling an important role of the media.

In my view, there are a number of reasons for Jamaica's anaemic economic record since the 1970s. Chief among them have been our high import-dependence, openness and obsession with consumerism; our poor backward and forward linkages, particularly our failure to develop agro-industry; our great divorce between planning and execution; a public sector not modernised sufficiently for national development and business facilitation; lack of sufficient inventiveness and innovativeness of our capitalist class; lack of venture and development capital; inadequately designed small business financing and training schemes and energy inefficiency.

constraints

Other critical constraints on our economic growth have been crime, garrison politics, corruption, educational underachievement, social underdevelopment, inequality, class divisions and alienation and, importantly, uninspiring, lacklustre leadership. Another major brake on our economic growth, and certainly on our prospects for the future, is the external environment and globalisation.

The issues of our economic underachievement are much broader than a one-dimensional, mono-causal obsession with low interest rates and private sector incentives.

Comparisons with Singapore fail to take into consideration the fact that it is not a liberal democracy and has been ruled by one party since the 1950s. Singapore does not have our competitive electoral system and our raucously free press. It is amazing some things you can achieve without having to think about Western-style elections and without talk shows and journalists who are free to say and write anything. Singapore also has a culture which nurtures, promotes and celebrates excellence, unlike ours which often penalises it, except in sports.

Singaporeans are disciplined, have a high respect for public order, education and are positively influenced by Confucian values. We must also remember that Singapore benefitted significantly from the Cold War and from American strategic political support.

Besides, and this is important to free marketers, Singapore did not take a laissez-faire approach to economic development. It guided the economy. One recent article I read which compared Singapore with Jamaica noted the usual things about the two countries being roughly at the same level in the 1960s and how Singapore looked to us then with admiration. But the article itself noted some important things which neoliberal defenders of the free market here fail to note.

Singapore provided public funds for venture capitalists, gave subsidies to firms and had incentives to encourage risk-taking.

economic strategies

There is one book I strongly recommend to anyone who wants to participate in a serious discussion on economic strategies for Jamaica: Ha-Joon Chang's 2008 book Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free and the Secret History of Capitalism. (It was he who also write the noteworthy anti-free trade book Kicking Away the Ladder). A lot of the people who write and talk about Singapore and the Far East are ignorant of how those economies were built.

The fact is that the global economic architecture does not allow the kinds of things which facilitated the growth of the newly industrialised countries of the Far East. Indeed, the early industrialisers themselves, Britain and the United States, did not use free market tools to build their economies but were protectionist and statist in degrees.

The rules of the World Trade Organisation and the IMF and World Bank are not generally hospitable to economic development in the developing world. (But how have others grown? Because they have not had some handicaps already identified here).

Says Ha-Joon Chang: "Contrary to what the orthodoxy would have us believe, virtually all the successful developing countries since the Second World War initially succeeded through nationalistic policies, using protection, subsidies and other forms of Government intervention."

Japan controlled imports through control over foreign exchange. There were export subsidies, there was subsidised credits to targeted industries and directed credit. There were capital controls and foreign investment was strongly regulated.

Today, you can't do these things. Jamaica's problems were exacerbated by international pressure to liberalise capital control in the early 1990s.

We underestimate the extent to which our problems have been deepened by an international economic structure which is inimical to developing country growth. We are so obsessed with the foolish 'Is Manley fault, is Omar fault and now is Bruce's fault' that we miss the extent to which international factors constrain us. That is why comparisons with Singapore, Taiwan and the other Asian Tigers are overdrawn.

The Roman politician-philosopher Cicero said, "Not to know what has transacted in former times is to be always a child." So many of us are children in Jamaica and are prey to the political games of the propagandists for we fail to inform ourselves.

An IMF agreement will give many opportunities for propaganda-making on both sides. The Gleaner has initiated an important discussion on Jamaica's economic history and prospects. Let us, in the media, build a firewall to insulate the public from the politicians' propaganda and gamesmanship.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.