I think not. It cannot be that we expect ministers of government to travel around the world begging telephone calls or hijacking host countries’ Wi-Fi passcodes to exchange data, connect to the Internet, or to send text messages back home. Yet, based on some of the responses to the latest saga surrounding the multimillion-dollar ministerial cellular phone bills, one could easily infer that we expect no less of our travelling ministers and their junior counterparts.

I noticed the news about the excessive cellular telephone bills first on Television Jamaica. The television station used the Access to Information Act to obtain the information about the phone bills and, because news editors know how to manipulate incendiary issues, especially during slow news cycles, the dissemination of this particular story could not have come at a worse time for a largely unpopular Administration.

In this instance, editorial judgement achieved its objective, since news of the new “telephone scandal” — as the Jamaica Labour Party cleverly describes it — has caught on like wildfire and, given our penchant for controversy, it has certainly been a bonanza for political twits with nothing else to occupy their minds or time.

Like the well-reasoned Jamaica Observer editorial of Wednesday, October 29, 2014, we should discuss the issues surrounding the latest revelation without the usual polemics that these stories tend to stir. Perhaps we should reserve judgement in this case; we could just prevent being hoisted by our own petard.

The information reveals that 11 Cabinet ministers and some junior ministers racked up over $5 million in cellular phone bills, over a 12-month period, which spanned July 2013 to June 2014. Five million dollars is a chamberful of money by any stretch of the imagination, even though, when contextualised, this amount is roughly the equivalent of US$338 per month, per minister (including their junior minister) or approximately US$.01594 cents on average per capita per year.

As with private enterprises, there are certain variable and unavoidable costs that are crucial to the operations of State business. To add insult to injury, the news report also highlighted that, of the 5 million, $1 million was incurred on the cellular phone assigned to Arnaldo Brown, minister of state in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Foreign Trade. If accurate, Minister Brown’s apparent verbosity represents almost 20 per cent of the entire bill for the 12 months under review.

Preamble aside, I hasten to disabuse anyone of the notion that I am giving tacit support for governmental excesses or that the foregoing is encouragement for ministers or public servants to spend taxpayers’ money cavalierly or insensitively. An inconvenient truth, however, is that when it comes on to our politicians, our love-hate relationship is not only schizophrenic, but our unreasonableness knows no bounds. I guess the jackass is correct about the unevenness of the world.

Some of us who are chewing iron over this latest development would have had no issues at all were the ministers using their personal resources to conduct government’s business, or running up their personal phone bills for our benefit, especially if at the end of the day they let off a few “Shearers” so we can eat a food. However, as the Guinean proverb postulates: “A child can play with its mother’s breasts, but not with its father’s testicles.” Some of those who are squealing the loudest have yet to pay a dime in taxes as they continue to dodge the taxman.

Furthermore, most of our “chatty-chatty” politicians come from the same schools as the rest of us. Many of us cannot help our affinity to “labba-mout”, chat ad nauseam, and draw long bench for the simplest of things. Simply put, we love to chat and, sadly, sometimes the things that we yap about, including other people’s business, are of little value to our own development or prosperity.

The question on everybody’s mind, though, is “what on God’s earth could the goodly state minister and lawyer be talking about, over the 12- month period to cost taxpayers a thousand-thousand Jamaican dollars?” Could it be that he was busy talking to members of the Jamaican Diaspora or to chiefs of mission around the world? Given our dislike of official travel, was he, for instance, helping Jamaicans sort out their legal woes in countries like Trinidad and in the Gulf state of Dubai?

These are all reasonable questions that only Minister Brown can answer. It gets “curiouser and curiouser”, especially when juxtaposed to the current prime minister’s “working, working, working” mantra. Was it that Brown was busy “working, working, working” the telephone to secure better trade deals for Jamaica? Then again, it is said “lawyers love the sound of their own voice”. For, while this may or may not be true, the cliché gets flimsier

when one considers how economically former prime minister, P J Patterson, chose and spoke his words.

It is true, talk is not cheap, but there is even a bigger message and reminder to all Jamaicans in all of this that “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”. Telephone giants Digicel and LIME can attest to the overwhelming success their businesses have enjoyed in Jamaica and of the billions of dollars in profits they have realised from the national pastime of many poor Jamaicans.

Bad luck is certainly worse than obeah. I say this because news of the 2013/2014 $5-million cellular phone bill virtually killed the other very positive and far-reaching story coming out of the World Bank about Jamaica’s gigantic leap on the Global Ease of Doing Business index, and of its stellar improvement in the distance to frontier score. By way of background, in the 2015 index, economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, from 1-189. A “high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm”.

These achievements are crucial to the fulfilment of the growth agenda the Government is seeking to activate as a conduit to creating jobs and increasing employment. The ease of doing business ranking compares economies with one another, while the distance to frontier score benchmarks economies with respect to regulatory best practices. These accomplishments are by no means easy feats. Kudos to the political directorate, as well as to public servants, special consultants, and members of the private sector for forging a dynamic partnership that assisted in advancing Jamaica to 58th out of 189 countries. We must encourage our Government to press along with the necessary reforms, the results of which can only redound to the benefits of our country and its people.

Burnscg@aol.com