Following the election on November 28, 2011, Focus 2012 in Commentary and Analysis did a piece called President Ramotar’s One Hundred Days. It took the form of a balance sheet showing on the one side the assets (plusses) and the other the liabilities (negatives). Accountants interpret an excess of assets over liabilities as a positive, equity in their language, and a reverse situation as a deficit. Focus 2015 considers it fair therefore to review the first hundred days of the Granger Administration but using a different approach – its Hundred Days Commitment contained in their Manifesto.
Many persons, both supportive of and independent of the Government considered it appropriate to let the Government have their honeymoon period, the partners getting to know each other and trying to understand their new roles and functions, assessing their ministries and portfolios and learning the environment of the bureaucracy. After taking some flak for their underachievement measured by the test of their twenty-one commitments, the Government hurriedly issued their self-assessment in a document 100 DAY ACTION PLAN – deliverable August 24, 2015.
Naturally there was some self-interest at stake, the desire to look good and to deflect criticism. Their scorecard reads as follows:
Delivered 7
Advanced Progress 4
Partially Completed 2
In Progress 8 21.
Our own assessment is that the picture is not as impressive and the Government ought to have achieved much more. There are twenty-six Ministers in fifteen Ministries. Adopting a simplistic approach, if each Minister had been assigned just one of the commitments all twenty-one commitments would have been achieved with time to spare. There were some things that for various reasons could not be achieved. For example, the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission requires a recommendation of the Public Accounts Committee which requires the participation of the Opposition in the National Assembly. The Government says, implausibly, that it is working out the modalities for that, apparently unaware that the AFC had completed that exercise long before and had submitted the names of nominees long before the elections.
The self-assessment also says that in respect of the Investigation Commission on Corruption that it has established a State Assets Recovery Programme. Not only are these two very different but it is regrettable that the Government has not consulted with Transparency Institute Guyana Inc. which has access to the resources and expertise necessary for such a Commission.
Similar concerns and objections can be raised to many of the comments offered by the self-assessment for non-completion. That can however be counterproductive. We believe that the very act of the self-assessment should concentrate minds and attention.
The problem as we see it was that no single person was charged with responsibility for the achievement of the commitments. The suggestion in the media that this responsibility should have been assigned to the Prime Minister, whose portfolio is surprisingly light, appears to have been ignored.
Another problem is the apparent obsession of several of the Ministers, no doubt due to their inexperience, with the media and their photographs. It is as though they are trying to outdo each other. Work is not about being photographed for the media but the hard slog of briefing themselves about the law, the regulations and the objectives and challenges of their respective Ministries and ultimately getting things done.
Mr. Granger should have realised that the majority of his Ministers are new and inexperienced in policy formulation and management. As we have on many occasions, we remind the Administration of what Tony Blair did in the UK prior to Labour’s victory. He selected one hundred persons and had them attend training sessions conducted by an international management consultancy firm McKinsey. The members of this Administration can do with similar exposure.
But before we close on this segment Ram & McRae expresses the hope that local government elections – that essential element of democracy – will be held before the end of December 2015 as signalled by Mr. Jordan during the Budget speech. This passing mention did nothing to remove the uncertainty surrounding this issue however, since their commitment is to specify a date. As the President said in 2014 as an opposition Member of Parliament, this is “a constitutional obligation and a democratic entitlement of the Guyanese people. It is not an option of the executive branch of government”.
