Tough Call has done it again this week with his article on tackling crime here at this post…
The article raised the issue of Whitleblowing based on comments received at this earlier post….
It seems to this not so humble blogger that some civil servants and elected officials take this all so personally at this point. The objective is correcting an issue that affects each and every Bahamian in one way or another.
And on top of that, all of us bear some responsibility with the failure of the judicial system. Either we do not prosecute when we should, or we ask a favour for our ‘good son or daughter’ so charges are not issued.
The law needs to be allowed to take its course, free of political influence, plain and simple.
Let’s get all the cards on the table from the civil servant’s perspective, the politico’s perspective and the general publics perspective and only then can solutions be found to this vexing matter.
Civil Servant’s hiding behind General Orders or politicians burying their head in the sand and individual citizens continually being allowed to circumvent the law must stop if we are to succeed.
One final point. At this point the government has the sympathy of the voters as most conscious Bahamians can understand that we face a huge uphill battle to resolve crime, but to go on denying it does not serve the country well going forward. It will only take us further backward.
Rick, you can’t have it both ways.
Either you get people of integrity working in the civil service — people who by nature take the strictures of the system which include the strictures of General Orders and/or legislation governing public servants seriously — or you don’t. Don’t beat those of us who choose integrity over corruption up for (a) taking your comments about “hiding behind” general orders personally or (b) keeping our mouths shut in public. It’s part and parcel of the whole deal — rather like the fact that freedom of speech in the USA means that people who preach hate are as free to speak as those who preach tolerance.
The problem is not the civil servant of integrity, it’s the system itself. And everyone is complicit in maintaining the system. The system is the responsibility of every Bahamian, because it governs those who govern the citizenry. If you want it changed, change it. You are a voter, and you have the freedom to speak — unlike those of us who, as voters, do not by virtue of the confidentiality requirements of our employer.
Also, you seem to assume that those of us who keep our mouths shut in public do not and have not spoken (and written) at length in private. There is nothing that says I cannot say what I think within the confines of the civil service, and I have done so. The fact that nothing has changed is evidence of the fundamental dysfunction of the civil service and the resistance to change that we all have.
I DO take your comments personally. It seems to me that they cost you nothing at all. Criticism is easy from the sidelines when you have not even made the attempt to find out what truths may exist. This is a very serious situation for me personally, and I take your comments just as seriously.
Just so you know.
No problem Nico.
The question now is, if the blame lies at the feet of the political elite, how do we get them to react to it?
Do we wait for the system to collapse entirely before someone leaves to find out what really is going on?
There has to be an informal process if the political elite is not prepared to have a formal process of reporting these deficiencies to Parliament where everyone is made aware so they can offer advice or assistance.
We know there will never be a perfect world, but we sure can try to get there. Or should we bother?
There are two main problems, both fairly easy to address (though not easy to fix).
The first one is the mistaken concept that non-civil servants have that it is the politicians, the leaders, who are to blame. To believe that is to fundamentally fail to understand the nature of the civil service. While this may have been true during the 25-year rule of the first PLP administration, and remained true (to some extent) under the first five years of the FNM administration, it began to lose force around the second FNM term. The power has shifted from the politicians to the civil servants, who know very well, most of them from the experience of a career, that politicians come and go but civil servants remain. The problem, and its solution, must lie either within the civil service — or in its complete transformation. The politicians can jolt the service out of its inertia with legislation or radical action, but they lack the guts to make that kind of change, as all politicians are interested in is getting elected again. To shock the service is to pretty well guarantee a defeat at the polls, and no politician seems willing to sacrifice power for the good of the nation.
The other problem is that we Bahamians — all of us, the public and the private sector alike — remain almost congenitally fragmented. Instead of discussing what we want or need as a country, as a nation undivided, we find it far easier and more entertaining to exacerbate basic divisions (black/white, Bahamian/Haitian, gay/straight, PLP/FNM) and focus more on scoring points off the other team than on building a nation. We have had thirty-five years of this idiocy and we will rapidly begin to feel the results; we have bred no second-generation leaders who can implement a vision for where we want to go as a nation, and we spend all our time talking about how we are not like the other guys. It’s a waste of time, and we do not have very much of that at all. We have already lost our edge in the tourist market, but nobody in the Ministry or the Cabinet seems to be aware of — or willing to address — that fact. We have nothing else left to fall back upon. We do not breed innovators anymore. Our forefathers were people who were not swayed the philosophies and habits of societies beyond us, but who thought up solutions that worked for our reality — pothole farming, navigation by sea-colour, hurricane-proof architecture, boats made for our waters. We are no more than mimics, people for whom imagination is a dirty word, and for whom innovation has died.
To blame parties, administrations, or the political elite is a cop-out. To blame the civil servant who says something is wrong is also a cop-out. What we Bahamians have to do is ask hard questions. Why can’t we do it this way? Why can’t we have that? Why can’t we create this? And we have to probe for the answers. If the answer has anything to do with another administration we need to throw it on a bonfire and burn it. There is no such thing as different administrations — it’s all a smokescreen. The only thing that changes is access to the throne. So we have to ask hard questions and not let up (even for party loyalty) until we have the answers. And when we find out that our system cannot provide any of the answers, we have to demand that it — not simply the party in power — change.
As I’ve noted, we all bear responsibility for the problems we face, but the question that started all this has still not been answered.
How do we get the information needed from concerned civil servants so we can demand those changes?
The point is, if the information is provided by those in the know, specific recommendations can then be crafted or the pressure be brought where it needs to be.
However, I’ve proven over the years that behind closed door pressure does not work. It has to be public, and it has to be sustained for people to even consider doing anything.
Agreed.
The short answer to your question is, you can’t. Civil servants of integrity — and there are many, believe you me — will not talk. Corrupt ones won’t either, because they’re, well, corrupt and they have too much to lose.
The problem is the system itself, which needs to be changed.
The other answer is that there are enough former civil servants in the private sector to begin to speak. Many of them saw their problems in isolation, and solved them by leaving. But the problem is being exacerbated by that very fact. The civil service is heading for a major crash in the next 5-10 years, with the best minds either leaving, disillusioned, or retiring after a lifetime of faithful service. There is no succession. There has been a freeze on hiring since 2000/2001 and the average age of the qualified professional in the civil service is disproportionately high; I am one of the youngsters in the service. Compare that to when my parents were public servants — both of them were senior managers by the time they were forty. Ask yourself why the present Prime Minister found it necessary — over ten years ago! — to raise the mandatory age of retirement for civil servants by five years, and ask yourself why nothing serious has changed since then.
Find out how many Directors of departments have left or are leaving in the last three years, and when they intend to leave. I can think of five without blinking an eye. Then find out who their replacements are, if you can. Compare the qualifications/experience/strengths of those replacements to the people who have left, and find out whether the expertise available to the nation in the public service is expanding or contracting. Find out the age of those replacements. Work out who will be around ten, fifteen, twenty years from now.
Governments don’t run on administrative staff (Permanent Secretaries, Under Secretaries, First Assistant Secretaries, Senior Assistant Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Administrative Cadets, etc). Governments need technocrats (i.e. people trained in specific areas — immigration, legal affairs, education, culture, health, public works, international finance, diplomacy, etc) to function. Find out who and where the technocrats are in each ministry. Chances are you’ll discover a bunch of things that should make you very, very worried.
Go start asking these questions. Go seek the average age in specific departments, find out the average qualification in each department, or find out what experience people have to offset a lack of qualifications. Find out who’s hiring the young Bahamians with the twenty-first century training, and what happens to those Bahamians when they have worked for a year or two. Chances are what you find out will be enlightening.
Cheers.
Interesting analysis. Let’s apply it to the issue that started this discussion.
There are only three judges assigned to criminal matters because of the lack of facilities to support additional judges.
This is leading to the collapse of our justice system (for reasons that you can read at Bahama Pundit).
The government began working on a new judicial complex to address these deficiencies in 1997-98. It is no further along today than it was then.
Is this because of the civil service dragging its feet? Is this because of a lack of technical expertise in the public sector?
No, it’s because the political class didn’t allocate the funds to pursue it.
Why didn’t we force them to do it? Because most of us didn’t know what the reality was or what was at stake. The information dribbled out over the years as things deteriorated.
So someone tell me who is at fault?
We’re all at fault.
Let’s analyze this still further.
1) We live in a democracy under a constitution that guarantees a certain measure of freedom of speech. While it is certainly arguable that there is not enough of that, it is also evident that we don’t use what we have. Members of the public and, perhaps most importantly, members of the press, do not ask enough pertinent questions when they are empowered to do so.
2) Civil servants are clearly constrained in what they can share publicly. General Orders can be read here:
http://www.bahamas.gov.bs/bahamasweb2/home.nsf/vContentW/FE1D4378D8FBD2BA8525716F005C749F
Specific regulations regarding confidentiality are here:
General Orders: Rules of Conduct:
http://www.bahamas.gov.bs/bahamasweb2/home.nsf/vContentW/DPSE–General+Orders–09.+Rules+of+Conduct!Opendocument
For members of the public to expect a right to information under these circumstances — or even to propose a Freedom of Information Act — these restrictions must be taken into account.
So. On one side, “freedom of speech”. On the other, the largest employer in the nation prevents its employees from speaking freely.
Those who are empowered to speak, though, are those who have been elected to serve us. The public needs to question MPs and Ministers as closely and as knowledgeably as possible, using all the instruments at their disposal — the Hansard, the debates in the House, the Acts of Parliament, and the promises (which politicians now commit to paper, conveniently). Demand answers and set timelines. Make noise. Civil servants cannot help, unless the public demands a change in the way in which civil servants are hired and governed.
And do we really want that anyway? (I’m asking; I don’t actually know).
Cheers.
Thanks Nicolette:
What I would like to see is more accountability of the public service and politicians.
It might not be accomplished by Civil Servants speaking out, but here should be a reporting mechanism for the public to know what is actually going on.
I know I sound like a stuck record, but when last has the public seen financial statements from the government corporations for example?
It is farcical that the government should pass laws to make the average citizen accountable, under the threat of jail time, and they continue along as if all is hunky-dory, while increasing our taxes to pay for the sham.
I don’t like it one bit.