SPEAKER of the House and South Trelawny Member of Parliament Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert, while praising the boldness of the move, says she believes Prime Minister Andrew Holness is “putting his political capital on the line” in establishing a joint select committee to review draft job descriptions for parliamentarians, which are expected to change how they operate.

Dalrymple-Philibert, who is chair of the committee tasked with fine-tuning the documents Holness tabled in Parliament in June for parliamentarians as a Green Paper and a White Paper for ministers, said there are still people in the society who believe that the status quo should remain the way it is.

She said the committee’s deliberations “will mark a milestone and a paradigm shift in governance, as we have known it for these past years.

“It does mark a new era in the life of our politics and what it really represents is the mantra of government when it comes to the service of our people…I’m sure you’ll all agree with me that this is indeed a very bold move on the part of any administration at all,” she said, as she opened the committee’s first meeting on Tuesday at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston.

The committee chair further noted that the Government, led by Andrew Holness, has, in mandating and setting this committee in motion, “taken a great leap, which I consider fearless, and I think that the prime minister must take credit this morning for this inaugural meeting of a bipartisan committee [which], with the aid of the Jamaican people, the input from all walks of society [will] create a job description on which our population can rely.”

In a statement in Parliament in June, Holness had first announced the establishment of a committee of Parliament to review the written job descriptions and enhanced code of ethics which have been drafted for parliamentarians.

The job descriptions and the enhanced code of ethics are among a raft of measures Holness announced during a press conference in May, under which he said members of the political directorate will be held to account for their higher salaries as part of the Government’s compensation review for the public sector.

Holness said that the committee will also be tasked to “articulate an accountability framework and to finalise for ourselves, the code of conduct”.

In referring to the adage ‘Rome was not built in a day’, the committee chair said that the task it is embarking on is a process of change that cannot happen overnight, “because, our political and our cultural landscape just cannot be changed in a day”.

She added: “It is a process and what the prime minister has asked this committee to do is to manage the process so that at the end of it, the country will have a clear sense of what is required of us as parliamentarians and ministers of government. So, as a committee, we are embarking on change management. We are going to manage the process of the change and so we have to look at the structure of the task at hand, we have to look at how it’s done in other countries across the world and of course, most importantly, I feel we must consult with civil society, our ordinary Jamaican people, who we are all elected to serve.”

She noted that putting together a job description for parliamentarians is not simple and not similar to creating a job description for a private company, “because a job description for anybody elected to serve has constitutional underpinning, and for me, the Constitution of Jamaica gives every single citizen in this country his or her right to offer themselves to represent the people of Jamaica.

“As a committee, at the end of the day, it is my hope, and I intend to do all I can, as I chair this committee to make sure that whatever we do, however we deliberate, we do not end up creating a ‘pie in the sky’ job description that would bar a large section of out population from offering themselves for service,” she said.

Meanwhile, other committee members, including Senator Kavan Gayle, agreed with the committee chair’s assertion that establishing and reviewing job descriptions for the political directorate was gutsy,

“I agree with the fact that this is a very bold move, and I believe it is setting a strategic target that encompasses how parliamentarians should work, how parliamentarians should demonstrate and deliver, and how parliamentarians should provide service and to be evaluated against such service,” Gayle said.