The government has decided to stick with its widely unpopular ministers’ salary increase. It does not appear, either, that an apology will be forthcoming from Minister of State Joseph Harmon for his unconscionable rudeness in the matter. In fact, it seems that as far as the administration is concerned that is not even an issue.
We can now be under no illusions about the weakness of its image-management skills. It does not appear that there was any public relations dimension whatsoever to the process that led to the decision to raise the ministers’ salaries. There was a feeble attempt to put a measure of political spin on the issue. Successive high officials have sought to make belated arguments for the salary increases based on what they say is the deserving nature of the case. In so doing they miss the bus –deliberately, one suspects – by a mile. Much of the public anger has less to do with the salary increase, per se, and more to do with whether other lesser categories of government workers are not far more immediately deserving of more pay. In other words, should ministers have been the first ones to be singled out for a meaningful pay rise. That, one suspects, is not a road down which the administration is likely to venture since it is unlikely to get to the other end in anything resembling good shape.
The net effect of the government’s lack of sound judgment in this matter has been the expenditure of valuable political currency which will now be difficult to recover. It correctly calculated that the alleged excesses of its predecessor as far as the management of the public purse and state assets were concerned would rob it of the requisite ammunition to mount a more spirited attack on the ministers’ salary increase; the other assumption that it might have made, that is, that having already demonstrated a willingness to wait for the arrival of the promised “good life,” that constituency that had rousingly welcomed a change of government would let the matter of the ministers’ salaries pass was clearly a huge miscalculation.
The appeal by Minister Raphael Trotman to Guyanese to “trust us,” – the government, that is – points to the government’s lack of understanding of the changing nature of the political climate. People remember that the PPP/C administration had assumed pretty much the same moral high ground when it took office in 1992 and look what happened over the succeeding two decades and more. What the new administration is only now beginning to find out is that the populace is no longer prepared to take government’s altruism for granted. Experience has taught us that self-preservation requires that we continually hold its feet to the fire.
We have said before that two separate and distinct issues have arisen here. There is, on the one hand, the insensitivity and indiscretion that attended the timing of the salary increases. On the other hand there is the arrogance of Mr. Harmon’s public response on the salary increase. In the matter of the former the government chose to fudge the issue by dealing with whether or not the salary raise was deserving rather than with the public relations amateurishness that attended the timing of the announcement of the increase. Up until now and save and except the feeble efforts of Minister Raphael Trotman at last week’s media briefing it has made no attempt to deal with Mr. Harmon’s excesses.
Mr. Harmon, as we understand it, functions as the government’s principal official spokesperson and that makes him the administration’s go-to minister for media questions. It is a job that requires skills that are continually learnt and in the course of its execution can give rise to questions from the media that he might find discomfiting, even downright irritating. Awkward questions are no good reason for intemperate displays of arrogance and Mr. Harmon should understand that the administration’s public image will continue to rest on a precarious perch for as long as he continues to be its lead spokesperson. Going forward, he can make a choice between toughing it out – in which case he will find his job a good deal more difficult – or else, demonstrating a sufficiently generous measure of contriteness as to send a clear signal that he has learnt the error of his ways. Mr. Harmon apart, what President Granger and the rest of the leadership of the government have to consider is that what the Minister of State had to say had been treated by many people as a dose of good, old-fashioned eye-pass and that once the matter is not dealt with properly, and quickly, – that is, if Mr. Harmon is not advised/directed to demonstrate a measure of contriteness – it is bound to surface again. Whether the job of ‘lead spokesperson’ is one to which the Minister of State is ideally suited is, of course, another issue which the government might need to ponder.
The other decision that the government must now make has to do with whether it will now read the political ‘tea leaves’ correctly and back away from the “trust us” posture that bears a conspicuous resemblance to a request for a blank cheque with which to govern. After the ministers’ salary increases debacle that, one very much doubts, will be forthcoming.
