Dear Editor,

‘Tight Gov’t’ the Jamaica Observer headline recently screamed giving the distinct impression to me that new prime minister, Andrew Holness, was barely able to find enough parliamentarians to make a governing Cabinet.

Admittedly, this prime minister had a small pool of parliamentarians from which to draw because of the almost even count between the governing Jamaica Labour Party and the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) (32:31). But that is because he chose to use the traditional method of drawing only from his ‘gene pool’ to select his Cabinet.

In about 2000 Rev Al Miller proposed that Jamaica should move toward establishing a government of national unity for five years. The idea was largely ignored by the parliamentarians of that time and generally disregarded by the average Jamaican of that era. It was an idea before its time.

Sixteen years later, a government of national unity, or what other nations have termed a coalition Government, seems to make perfect sense. A coalition is in essence “an alliance of parties formed for the purpose of …managing governance”. This managing can take place at a parliamentary or governmental (Cabinet) level and must involve genuine sharing and cooperation if it is to succeed.

This concept of a government of national unity or coalition means that PM Holness could have asked performing PNP ministers, such as Dr Peter Phillips (finance), Ronald Thwaites (education), Julian Robinson (science & tech) and Dr Wykeham McNeill (tourism), to remain as ministers in the critical ministries in which they served. That would have given the PM more liberty to consider a larger Cabinet.

Gordon “Butch” Stewart, in speaking about Cabinet size in 2012 and recently, said: “Too few hands or minds cannot cut it. We don’t have the structures and systems in place to manage Jamaica with a few Cabinet ministers. There is a high level of indiscipline and circumventing of the system here… A small Cabinet cannot adequately handle all the needs. We run the risk of overwhelming them if they are too few…What is eminently more sensible in determining the size of a Cabinet is looking at the workload the members have to carry, and the skill sets necessary, against the background of how well organised our governance structure is.”

So has PM Holness done the “eminently more sensible” thing in saving $2 million per month, or should he have considered a coalition? For those who see possibilities of betrayal and non-cooperation as possible disadvantages, this really isn’t so in reality, because of the constitutional convention called collective responsibility. So as long as the PM ensured that the co-opted Opposition ministers didn’t outnumber his party ministers, there is really no betrayal or disloyalty possible.

That being said, I wonder, had the PM attempted to form a coalition, would the idea have been embraced by Portia Simpson Miller and her team, and by extension the wider Jamaica? Or would it be like Rev Miller’s proposal in 2000?

Michael Aiken

mandrewa@aol.com