Editorial | National Partnership Council on life support?

Audrey Marks is a minister in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) with responsibility for efficiency, innovation and digital transformation.

In that role, Ms Marks’ mandate includes overseeing the introduction of new technologies in government ministries, agencies and departments (MDAs) to enhance efficiency, thus reducing friction in their interface with the public, including businesses. It is part of the government’s drive to transform Jamaica into a competitive 21st-century economy.

Ms Marks brings to the job two significant and important attributes. One is a reputation for getting things done. The second is her experience as an entrepreneur. She recently reacquired the bill-payment company, PayMaster, which she founded several years ago and subsequently sold to the telecommunications services provider Digicel.

Ms Marks therefore brings to the table an appreciation of the challenges, regulatory and otherwise, faced by firms in navigating the defensive barriers of the public bureaucracy, the obligations businesses have to their employees, and the conflicts that sometimes arise between these partners and have to be resolved.

This background should stand Ms Marks in good stead in dealing with the quiet but important element of her portfolio, which is deserving of more public focus and attention. She has the job of coordinating the National Partnership Council (NPC) which, unfortunately, appears to be in a state of suspended animation or a forgotten place of purgatory.

FORUM FOR DISCUSSION

The outcome of agreements between the Government, the political Opposition, the private sector, the labour movement and civil-society organisations, the NPC provides a forum for the discussion of government policies and programmes and for seeking consensus on potentially ticklish issues before disagreements erupt into public and debilitating brawls. While Jamaica has for several decades utilised this mechanism, and variations thereof, to resolve critical problems, it has had formal agreements, usually at four-year intervals, since 2009. The latest of these was signed in 2022, after a two-year hiatus following the expiry of the previous one. The current accord will conclude in mid-September, with seeming uncertainty about its future or its place in national discourse.

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness is the substantive chairman of the council, although, in the absence of the prime minister, another member can assume the chair. Regular meetings, under the agreement, are to be held quarterly.

However, the NPC has not convened in 2026. The last time it met was last October, when Prime Minister Holness was apparently absent.

There are probably explainable reasons why the OPM, the council’s functioning secretariat, has failed to convene it in 2026. The administration, for instance, might have been distracted by its mitigation and rehabilitation efforts following Hurricane Melissa, which devastated western Jamaica in October. The administration, and Prime Minister Holness in particular, may also have been busy creating the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA), the powerful special-purpose vehicle that will oversee post-hurricane reconstruction but has faced criticism because of weak governance oversight provisions in the legislation.

The Gleaner’s Editorial Board, however, remains convinced of the value of the NPC, bolstered by evidence of the council’s past quiet successes in either restraining stresses and/or shaping consensus on potentially explosive matters. The achievements of smaller bodies, such as the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC), which monitored Jamaica’s 2010s economic reform agreement with the IMF, serve to reinforce the board’s confidence in the NPC.

But this is not only Jamaica’s experience. In 1987, in the midst of a fiscal and social crisis, Ireland created a similar framework to the NPC. Its debt stood at 130 per cent of GDP, the fiscal deficit was 8.5 per cent, and unemployment exceeded 16 per cent. Its consensus-building process was credited with helping to transform Ireland from being the poor man of Europe into the Celtic Tiger. Closer to home, in Barbados, a partnership agreement born out of the fiscal crisis of the early 1990s has contributed to maintaining that country’s social and economic stability, notwithstanding other episodes of fiscal dislocation.

DECLARATION OF INTENT

That is the context in which The Gleaner looks forward to an urgent declaration of intent from the government on the renewal of the partnership agreement, and a commitment to implement undertakings given in the current pact.

These include a promise to “institutionalise the NPC” by, among other things, developing formal terms of reference for the council and its members, creating procedures for the appointment of members, and setting out the authority and mandate of the council. That should have happened already, but there has been no apparent movement on the matter.

The government should not only accelerate action on these undertakings, but should also anchor the NPC and its mandate in legislation. Established in law, the NPC would not be subject to, or reliant on, the perspective or whim of the government of the day. It would be a permanent institution with an ongoing mandate to find common ground on national issues. That would not diminish a government’s capacity to frame and ultimately implement policy.

Ms Marks could become the champion of this mission.