Three rules of work: Out of clutter find simplicity; from discord find harmony; in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. — Albert Einstein

I listened very intently to the discussions that centred on the revelations of former finance minister and The Gleaner ‘s man of the year, Dr Peter Phillips, vis-à-vis the management of the so-called Energy Stabilisation and Energy Efficiency Enhancement Fund (ESEEEF), last Wednesday.

The pundits and experts, doubtless well-intentioned, have all missed the crux of the matter: It’s bad governance, stupid!

Here I take liberties with a expression of James Carville, as a campaign strategist of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign against sitting President George H W Bush, “It’s the economy, stupid!

The former Administration’s time in office is a case study in bad governance. It was bad governance that resulted in a 40 per cent devaluation of the Jamaican dollar in just four years. It was bad governance that caused the weeklong fire at the Riverton dump, which released huge amounts of cancer-causing substances, like benzene, into the atmosphere. Hundreds of production hours were lost and companies lost billions, according to informal reports from the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica. It was bad governance that caused the ‘dead babies scandal’. It was bad governance that caused the Outameni scandal which is still costing the taxpayers of this country $900,000 per month and no benefit to contributors.

It was bad governance that informed the retention of former ministers, like Anthony Hylton, of ‘Krauck and Anchor’ fame; Phillip Paulwell, who presided over the failed Energy World International 381-megawatt bid project; Robert Pickersgill, who resurrected the wretched ‘articulate minority’ epithet, first used locally in a radio broadcast decades ago by South African/Jamaican novelist, Peter Henry Abrahams Deras (commonly known as Peter Abrahams), a bosom friend of former Prime Minister Michael Manley.

It was bad governance by the former PNP Administration that led to “$250 million spent preparing for an election that never happened” (The Gleaner, January 22, 2016). Bad governance by the former Portia Simpson Miller Government caused the redundancy of 500 workers at Golden Grove Sugar Factory in St Thomas, in September 2015. The fallouts in our sugar industry as evidenced in the problems at the Frome and Monymusk estates — all consequences of poor governance by Simpson Miller and her crew.

A couple weeks ago I commented, inter alia: “In less than five months, over 1,250 sugar workers have lost their jobs. Nearly 19,000 citizens will be impacted, directly and indirectly, across seven parishes as a consequence. These are not mere numbers. These are living, breathing Jamaicans. We don’t need Pythagoras to calculate the impact on the total economy.” Bad governance by any other name is just that; bad governance.

Bad governance by the Simpson Miller’s Administration precipitated this finding by the auditor general: “Government did not receive value for money in an almost $9-billion project implemented by the agency.” (The Gleaner, November 11, 2015) Our economy lost $7 billion and 13 million production hours because of the carelessness of the former Administration to prepare the country adequately for the chikungunya outbreak.

It was bad governance that led to the cock-ups at the National People’s Co-operative Bank of Jamaica. The findings of an audit conducted by the Agricultural Credit Bank were scathing at minimum. I could go on ad infinitum in regard to the bad governance of the previous Administration.

Enrico Fermi, physicist and Nobel laureate (1901-1954), famously said: “If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a measurement.”

Bad governance is as bad governance does. Peter Phillips’ revelation, last Wednesday, that the necessary legislations were not set in place to govern the smooth administration of the ESEEEF, is but a symptom of the stage four cancer that killed the former Administration.

In a story posted on theJamaica Information Service website on March 26, 2015, the country was informed among other things:

“The Government is to establish an Energy Stabilisation Fund to receive and manage the resources generated from the oil hedge programme.

“Minister of Finance and Planning Dr Peter Phillips made the announcement during the closing of the 2015/16 budget debate in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, March 25.

“’The resources include the proceeds from a portion of the additional $7 per litre of specific Special Consumption Tax (SCT) on petrol — specifically $5 per litre — as well as any future payment from the hedge contract, should future oil price movements lead to such payments.

“ ‘These resources will flow into a dedicated sub-account in the Bank of Jamaica for the (Energy Stabilisation) Fund, which will be administered by the Development Bank of Jamaica in conjunction with the Ministry of Finance,’ Dr Phillips informed.

“He noted that these resources will be made available to service the cost of implementing the initial hedge transaction, any future hedging, as well as a number of possible energy stabilisation initiatives, where the resources permit.

“Dr Phillips told the House that a Ministry Paper is to be tabled shortly outlining the relevant governance arrangements for the Energy Stabilisation Fund, including reporting and transparency arrangements.

“ ‘We also intend to bring legislation, in the not too distant future, which will establish, in a binding and transparent way, the energy stabilisation purposes for which these resources may be utilised,’ he said.

“ ‘We intend to establish a transparent, binding covenant with taxpayers, regarding the use of their tax dollars for the purposes for which we have asked them to contribute,’ the minister pointed out.”

Note the penultimate paragraph of this excerpt. There was apparently no great haste to “establish, in a binding and transparent way, the energy stabilisation purposes for which these resources may be utilised”. This was to be done in the “not too distant future”. Why was this cavalier approach taken? In the last four years we have seen several examples of where legislations to suit the timetable of the International Monetary Fund were passed in a Nicodemus-like manner by the former Administration. Why the total lack of urgency here? How long did it take the former Administration to pass the legislations to facilitate transfer pricing?

Dr Phillips told us some years ago that the “the man who plays by the rules get shafted”. Did Phillips apply that thinking in relation to the passing of the legislations to administer the ESEEEF? By deduction, since Phillips believes that, “the man who plays by the rules get shafted”, then the absence of legislation would have been an administrative nirvana.

By their fruits we shall know them, says the good book. Recall that, “Just under a year after the People’s National Party (PNP) lost power to the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Dr Peter Phillips agreed with a United States official that Jamaica risked becoming like Haiti if the Government failed in its reform efforts and if Portia Simpson Miller, whom he called a ‘disaster’ for the country, was returned to power, according to a US diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks.

“The cable, dated July 8, 2008, also said that when the US officer asked Phillips if he would ever serve in another Simpson Miller-led Government, the former national security minister stated that he never says never, but his answer is ‘no; it would simply be too distasteful.’

“Phillips stated that it was an astonishing possibility that the PNP, after ‘running the country into the ground for the last 18years’, could possibly come back to power, the cable said.

“According to Phillips, Simpson Miller, who was in a political free fall after the PNP’s defeat in September 2007, has been energised by the most recent poll numbers, the cable added.” ( Jamaica Observer, July 7, 2011)

Were political considerations at play? Recall, that life chairman of the People’s National Party Robert ‘Bobby’ Pickersgill, said: “We believe it is best for the PNP to form the Government, therefore, anything that will lead us or cause us to be in power is best for the PNP and best for the country.

On October 1, 2015, a story headlined ‘Jamaica hedges 8 million barrels of crude in deal with Citibank’ was posted on the website of Jamaica Information Service. It said, among other things:

“Dr Phillips said the $3.3 billion premium payment to Citibank, which should have been made from the proposed Energy Stabilisation and Energy Efficiency Enhancement Fund (ESEEEF), was advanced from a Finance Ministry budget contingency provision, ‘which was approved for this purpose’.

“This, as the legislative framework to facilitate the ESEEEF’s establishment and govern its operations is currently being undertaken following Cabinet’s approval in August.

“The funds to be channelled into the ESEEEF will be derived from revenue generated from the $7 special consumption tax (SCT) on fuel, which came into effect in April.

“The ESEEEF aims to provide the resources needed to better position the Administration to undertake projects over the medium to long term that will reduce Jamaica’s dependence on oil imports and undertake the hedge programme.

“These, as part of measures to cushion the country against the impact of possible global oil price shocks.

“Revenue generated from the SCT, between April and July, totalled $2.45 billion, of which Dr Phillips said $1.75 billion has been set aside for the ESEEEF.”

“The remaining $700 million, he told the House, will go into the Consolidated Fund.”

Note well the second paragraph of this excerpt: April, May, June, July, August, September, a full six months passed, and the legislations to govern the operations of the ESEEEF’s were “only currently being undertaken following Cabinet’s approval in August 2015”. Why? We don’t need Einstein to figure it.

The PNP’s sole preoccupation was the passing of International Monetary Fund (IMF) tests. They believed passing IMF tests had a talisman-like effect.

The election results of February 25, 2016 proved how wrong, pollsters, PNP insiders and most media pundits were about the political temperature in the country. However, the JLP’s victory can be interpreted in the fact that the PNP was rejected at the polls.

There are some who feel that the PNP did not lose. They have clothed themselves in the nightmare regalia that former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller espoused some years ago. I am told by the birds, those reliable, John Chewits, Banana Quits and Black-Bellied Plovers that some in the PNP who believe the Tainos [a member of an extinct Arawak people formerly inhabiting the Greater Antilles and The Bahamas], bequeathed Jamaica to them for 1,000 years have organised to give the Andrew Holness Administration living hell. They will fail.

Last week, several PNP ‘spinners’ who were dormant for the last four years took their political Viagra and Flibanserin and flooded media spaces with loud shouts of ‘one arm bandit and three-card trick’. I predicted this several weeks ago. I believe a critical mass, inclusive of those Pickersgill insultingly labelled as the ‘articulate minority’, are smarter than the PNP give us credit. We recognise the huge difference between what former dancehall artiste Tiger called “puppy love”, and what reggae legend Bob Marley dubbed “natural mystic”.

Vincent van Gogh once said. “Conscience is a man’s compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities when directing one’s course by it, one must still try to follow its direction.” There is a new category of voters who have adopted this mentality. Certain anachronistic figures might soon make this discovery.

While some begged the sky to fall and a few shouted, “Give us Barabbas,” it seemed, maybe deliberately, they had missed the utterance below by Minister of Finance Audley Shaw:

“I gave the unequivocal undertaking that regardless of what is being said, virtually on a daily basis, the commitment that we have made to employees that are earning less than $1.5 million — that commitment stands. It’s firm and irrevocable and even if it doesn’t start on April 1 because of the budgetary process, it will at least be retroactive to April,” Shaw said.

“We believe that providing tax relief to this segment of Jamaicans, the working poor, among them are public sector workers who have been on a wage freeze, is not only fair, but will stimulate the economy. We are assessing a number of options to mitigate the fiscal impact of this measure and we are confident that it can be accommodated within the context of a broader tax reform.” ( Jamaica Observer, March 30, 2016)

We who have lived here in Jamaica long enough and or all our lives remember only too well the ‘oxtail, curry goat promises,’ that were not fulfilled by the Simpson Miller Administration. In 2007 the JLP promised relief from tuition fees at the secondary level. It was done. They also promised to abandon prerequisite fees to access basic health care. It was done.

The fact is, in recent years the JLP has kept its promises to the electorate. The PNP has not.

I give another illustration for good measure. Gordon Robinson in an article in the Sunday Gleaner of March 15, 2015 said, among other things: “This pearl came from the lips of Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller at a PNP campaign rally in November 2011. Fist raised and flanked by party stalwarts, including chairman-for-life Robert ‘Chicken Feed’ Pickersgill, she gloated that only the PNP would stop this torture by GCT of the Jamaican people. For the avoidance of all doubt, Mrs Simpson Miller went on to emphasise that the removal of GCT from light bills would also be extended to the productive and business sectors in order to improve productivity and create more jobs.” This promise by the PNP is yet to be fulfilled.

Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment. — Baltasar Gracian

Garfield Higgins is an educator, journalist, and advisor to the minister of education, youth and information. Send comments to the Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.