(Jamaica Gleaner) Flip-flopping on her previous position on big government while she was in Opposition, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has named a 28-member executive that will cost taxpayers close to J$200 million per annum, at current rates, in salaries and allowances.
According to data gleaned from a Gordon House document detailing the salaries, allowances, and reimbursable expenses payable to members of parliament (MPs) and the political directorate, the 20 members of the Cabinet will pocket J$134.5 million per annum while the eight ministers of state will collectively bank J$47.01 million.
When the salaries and allowances payable to the slate of junior ministers are added to what is being paid to the members of the Cabinet, the total executive pay package balloons to J$181.5 million. This does not include the salary of the attorney general, a post previously tied to that of the minister of justice.
After naming her 18-member shadow Cabinet in May last year, Simpson Miller said if she were in government, the number would not be that high.
“I did not announce an 18-member Cabinet. I’m not the Government,” she said when asked if that would be the size of her Cabinet.
She continued: “You would not have 18 … I would not be giving the country a breakfront,” she quipped.
Less than a year later, Simpson Miller has unveiled a Cabinet that is bigger than her slate of shadow spokespersons.
Critics have advanced that if Golding’s 19-member Cabinet was too big, then Simpson Miller’s ‘breakfront’ can’t go through the front door.
While in Opposition, the People’s National Party (PNP) president was strident as she castigated then prime minister, Bruce Golding, for naming a 19-member Cabinet. She labelled Golding’s Cabinet a breakfront and pointed out that it was one of the largest in the history of the country.
But on Friday, Simpson Miller, now in the high seat of government after the PNP’s 42 to 21 seat victory over the JLP in the late December polls, did one better than Golding.
In September 2009, Simpson Miller challenged Golding to cut the size of his Cabinet. While addressing the People’s National Party executive in Runaway Bay, St Ann, Simpson Miller said: “Don’t come to us and ask for cooperation. You cannot ask the country for cooperation, Mr Prime Minister (Golding) when you continue to retain your mega-size Cabinet. I’m calling on the prime minister to do the honourable thing: Cut the size of the Cabinet now!”
At that time, Simpson Miller also said that the Golding-led government had no moral authority to talk about reducing the size of the public sector when it had found jobs for virtually every JLP functionary.
Cut them
“Set the example by cutting them until things are back on track, Mr Prime Minister. No more jobs for the boys,” she said at the time. Simpson Miller continued her verbal attack by saying that Jamaica had seen the true colours of the JLP administration, which she described as “incompetent, inexperienced, and inadequate”.
While not being the largest in the country’s history, Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s 19-member Cabinet was probably the most expensive up to last Friday.
When Golding named his Cabinet in September 2007, it was to cost the country just under $70 million per annum to cover the basic salaries of the 19 members.
However, according to the Gordon House document, effective April 1, 2009, Golding and other government MPs took a 15 per cent and 10 per cent salary cut, respectively.
Simpson Miller and Opposition MPs refused to follow suit. She argued that Golding would have effected much more meaningful savings by slashing his 19-member Cabinet.
The Golding executive was completed by 11 state ministers and two parliamentary secretaries. This compares to the 12-member second-tier leaders appointed by prime ministers Patterson and Simpson Miller during their tenures prior to 2007.
Golding’s naming of his second-tier leaders pushed the annual salary bill of the political directorate to over $100 million. The approximately $70 million for Cabinet members did not include all the allowances payable to them, which can run close to $700,000 per year for some ministers.
In October 2011, Andrew Holness named a 17-member Cabinet and nine junior ministers.
