The issue of the Social and Economic Support Programme (SESP) has been brought back to the forefront by the unseemly squabble in Parliament this week between government and Opposition members over the size of the fund.

Please, do not be misled by this quarrel.

The existence of the SESP is one of the few things on which there is unanimity on both sides of the House, notwithstanding the decision of the government to reduce the allocation and the demand by the Opposition that it should be at least at last year's level of $257 million.

For that to happen would require that the finance minister, Dr Davies, add another $44 million to the budget. In the scheme of things, this is a relatively small sum.

But Dr Davies' resistance to increasing the allocation, we suspect, is driven more by pressure to reduce the fiscal deficit rather than a philosophical stance.

We believe that the same was the case in the two previous fiscal years when he cut the SESP budget. Indeed, the prime minister, Mr Patterson, has been a stronger defender of the SESP.

This newspaper, however, as it has made clear in the past, is fundamentally against the SESP and its variant that has been proposed by the new leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, Mr Bruce Golding.

We believe that the SESP - an allocation of funds for parliamentarians to support projects in their constituencies - is a way for politicians to get their hands on the people's resources to distribute political pork.

Indeed, we are often told about the great and wonderful things that MPs and caretakers do with these funds to assist people in need and to finance community projects. We also hear the claims of the transparency in the use of these funds.
But there are, too, the many anecdotal cases of the schemes to misuse the funds to pass money to the party faithful and political hangers-on. Few persons have not heard of the bogus receipts for goods and services not provided, while the cash finds its way into people's pockets.

But the opportunity for corruption, petty though it may be, is not our only, or even prime reason, for opposing the SESP.
Our more fundamental concern is that politicians ought not to be in the business of distributing resources. This slicing up and parceling out of pork is unseemly behaviour.

What politicians ought to be are advocates for the people they represent as well as the legislators who establish a set of transparent rules - called laws - by which we all operate. In other words, it is their job to make cogent and coherent cases on behalf of communities. Having laid out broad policy, bureaucrats ought to be left to implement programmes, based on clear and specific criteria.

Moreover, there are public agencies that exist to take on the social welfare programmes which the politicians claim are afforded by the SESP. Really, we think that the politicians are hooked on this narcotic of distributing "scarce benefits and spoils".

Which is why the SESP generates such spirited debate whenever it is under any threat.

Neither do we believe that Mr Golding's proposal for the allocation of up to five per cent of the national budget for spending in constituencies is any better idea.

The prescription, to us, is SESP enhanced. It again leaves the door to the larder open for the politicians to get at the pork.

The Audacity of Art

Marjorie Whylie to receive Stella Gregory Award

Traditional Thanksgiving offerings at EVITAS