accountability

After posting that screed yesterday about parliaments and accountability, I heard on the BBC that in Uganda MPs are being graded on their performance, A to F.

Works like a charm apparently

power plays

The bacchanal going on at Westminster has thrown up some good ideas that could make the political process more open and democratic, and not only in Britain. They are based on accountability, transparency and decentralisation — all of which scare politicians to death, even while pompously paying lip-service to them. And I'm wondering how they would go down here in Trinidad and Tobago.

(Well, I know how they would go, down being the operative word, but it's still nice to dream.)

Our system is democratic in the sense that elections are held every four or five years, and (on the rare occasion when an incumbent government is defeated) the outgoing administration gives way peacefully to its successor.

But accountable? Transparent? Decentralised?

This is the reality. Local government is not trusted with any but the most routine chores. Local government elections are two years overdue, not for the first time, and no one even bothers to complain.

All real power has been stripped away from parliament and assumed by the executive. With its elected majority in the lower house, an inbuilt majority in the unelected upper house, and sufficient clout to have its candidates for House Speaker and Senate President adopted without challenge, the executive is in full control. This "parliament" "elects" the president (the head of state), which means that the president, unless he or she is fiercely independent, can easily become beholden to the prime minister, and could be aware of this (perhaps unconsciously) when making presidential appointments and decisions.

The executive controls a huge array of public appointments in its own right — chairmen, CEOs and directors of state agencies and companies (through which vast amounts of public money can pass). Its candidates are seen to be appointed to the top positions in the police, the security forces, and the public service. It can undermine (and even bankrupt by legal proceedings) public figures who are supposed to be protected from interference, such as judges, and anyone who does not toe the line.

In all this, the government is not required to consult seriously with anyone else, or to account to anyone. Decisions are taken at the top, in secret, and may in due course be communicated to the public (or they may not). In any case, the public is assumed to be mostly interested in bread and circuses (which is often true) and easily distracted by some new scandal or "nine-days wonder", real or concocted.

For example, Trinidad and Tobago is supposed to be entering some form of economic and political integration with several of the eastern Caribbean islands: but no one yet knows any details, and there has been no public consultation. It's as if the US were planning to merge with Canada, or England with France, and did not bother to tell the people. But that's how it is: always top-down and secret, meaningful power clutched tightly to the executive breast.

So why don't we:

1) Make the promises in the parties' election manifestos legally binding, a contract between the party and the electorate. If the party does not implement them when it comes to power, it can be recalled (and at the very least, parties will be discouraged from lying through their teeth during election campaigns).

2) Fix election dates, as is done in the US. The ability to call an election at the government's convenience gives it a hugely unfair advantage, and weakens its accountability to the electorate.

3) Radically decentralise power to local government — local decision-making, budgeting, spending, implementation; elected town and borough mayors with real responsibility. The political elite must break this habit of hoarding power to itself.

4) Hold local and national referenda when major decisions are to be made.

5) Have non-performing or badly-performing MPs recalled and fired by their constituencies.

6) Guarantee independence for the public service and the judiciary, to protect them from any suspicion of government influence and interference; appointments made by independent professional bodies, not by the government.

7) Hold primary elections for party candidates, to democratise the electoral process: election candidates no longer selected in private by party bosses.

8) Reform the "first-past-the-post" voting system to allow smaller parties and interest groups a voice. Yes, the party system tends to create a strong government: the trouble is, it creates governments which are too strong, and are essentially unaccountable to anyone during their time in office.

9) Radically reform parliament to restore its original power, dignity and authority; and its accountability to the electorate. A parliament is really no use to a population unless it can:

... hold the executive to account

... control government spending

... set its own business timetable, not have it dictated by the government

... examine all new legislation as minutely as it wants

... operate in a completely non-partisan way at committee stage, focusing on the text before it

... operate elected standing committees, with elected chairmen and real investigative powers

... allow free votes whenever it decides this is desirable

... reject frivolous, partisan, or unnecessary legislation. New legislation should be a major event, not a trivial routine

... require the government to provide information as and when needed; ministers who decline to answer questions, or delay answers, should be heavily censured or suspended

... debate any matter of national importance as and when it wants; any petition signed by a minimum number of voters must be debated on presentation.

10) Oblige all state entities to account to the public by posting online their spending and activities.

11) Make ministers and MPs publish online their expenses, their work (and other) agendas, any commitments made to interest groups or lobbies, their office costs, travel, staff and salaries, and decisions as they are made. Ministries must post information about spending, decisions and activities without waiting to be asked.

12) Have draft legislation posted online so that the public can see what is being proposed from the start.

13) Let television cameras in parliament shoot whatever they want, unfettered by ridiculous restrictions about MPs sleeping, yawning, reading novels, doing their accounts, etc.

14) Beef up the privileges committee in parliament and have it investigate any suspicion that an MP or minister has lied to the house, misled the house, or withheld the truth from the house. These should be seen as grave offences (not as routine political games), and punished accordingly, no matter who the offender is.

Of course any of these changes would require the devolution of power away from the centre, which is utterly taboo in modern politics — certainly here in Port of Spain, and I bet at Westminster too, once the fuss has died down.

weasel words

The Labour government in Britain seems to be imploding even more spectacularly than Margaret Thatcher's did in 1990. Now near the end of its third term in office, it is exhausted, out of ideas, and mired in sleaze to an extent no one thought possible. The arrival next year of a Conservative government under David Cameron seems a certainty.

Labour's twelve-year reign has been a bitter disappointment. When it swept to power in 1997 under Tony Blair, the Obama-figure of the day, the talk was of a new dawn, a new era of overdue reforms after long years of dull, reactionary Conservative rule under Thatcher and John Major. But it is never wise to put your hopes in politicians, however inspiring they sound. Blair failed to deliver, and instead led Britain into the Iraq war against the wishes of the majority of the people. He evaded, he lied, he developed "spin" politics to a level of cynicism even greater than Thatcher's. The Labour party — supposedly the radical, reforming, progressive, inspirational party — drifted further and further to the right, and ended up more conservative than the Conservatives.

Two terms in office is as much as any government can manage without exhaustion, and Labour is long past its sell-by date. The current row over the expenses that British MPs of both parties have been claiming behind the scenes shows just how easily public figures can slide into corruption.

It's tempting to say — well, at least, under the British system, the mess is being cleaned up. The bumbling Speaker of the House of Commons has been squeezed out of office, plenty of MPs have said they won't be standing for parliament again, and some have started repaying their ill-gotten perks. What's more, the Conservative opposition leader David Cameron has been floating a list of radical ideas for reform: making parliamentarians more accountable, systems more transparent, switching some power back from the executive to parliament, even fixed election dates (the power of the prime minister to time an election for whenever it suits him best is one of the worst elements of the so-called Westminster system). Various other senior figures have followed suit with their own ideas for reform, the sort of debate that has not taken place in Britain for decades.

But ... is it genuine? Have all these tainted politicians suddenly had visions of reform, like Saul on the Damascus road? Have they been nurturing radical ideals in their hearts all this time, just waiting for the right time to bring them to light? Is the Conservative leader really the radical reformer he's making himself out to be?

Or ... perhaps more likely ... is this all a gigantic smokescreen, as everyone rushes to divert attention from their little scams and to position themselves for the future, for a government reshuffle, for next year's elections, for any cosmetic reforms that prime minister Gordon Brown makes to save what little credibility he has left?

With politicians, it is never wise to put any trust in what they say, only in what they actually do.

poets at play

To be professor of poetry at Oxford University is really no big deal, despite all the hoo-ha surrounding this month's election of a new incumbent. It's a purely prestige job: the professor only has to give three lectures a year, there's no money in it, and the only benefit is the kudos.

The sleaze campaign against the front-runner Derek Walcott, his backing off in disgust, the triumph of his rival Ruth Padel, her resignation as it turned out she'd played at least a small part in the sleaze attack ... all this has been more akin to mud-wrestling than to literature.

As in last year's US presidential election, the candidates were a half-black man and a white woman, either of whom would have been a change from white anglo-saxon protestant males, and either of whom could have done the job. To tell the truth, I'd never heard of Ruth Padel; but Walcott is a revered poet (revered at least by other poets) and a Nobel prizewinner.

I'd have liked Walcott to win because it would be nice to have Oxford prestige bestowed on a Caribbean-born poet (though maybe he thinks of himself as more American than Caribbean these days), and it would be an extra accolade for Walcott at the end of his long career (he's nearly 80).

On the other hand, I can't say I've ever found Walcott an exciting writer. He's the sort you admire (or are expected to admire) rather than actually read. He's a dreadful reader of his own work, monotonous and uninvolved. I've never heard him lecture, and his students in the US say he's an excellent and demanding teacher, but I've always had the sense that he comes with so much emotional and intellectual baggage that I'd rather keep away.

(He's also a frustrated playwright. I used to review his plays here in Port of Spain when he ran the Trinidad Theatre Workshop many years ago, and I know how intellectually ambitious and structurally creaky they are. His great ambition was to get a musical on Broadway, which I always felt was a rather depressing goal for a serious writer.)

But then ... is there any poet writing today, anywhere, who is really exciting and inspirational? I can imagine that in the time of Yeats, Pound, Eliot, anyone interested in life and ideas and ground-breaking words would have fallen greedily on each new book as it appeared. But now ... is there anyone whose poetry is really essential to read? People sometimes argue about whether the novel is dead, as a form, but it seems to me that the genre that is already dead is poetry. Yawn. I can't even remember when I last read a poem.

Two footnotes to this affair, though. It is often assumed that "the artist", the genius, the Great Creative One, cannot be held to the same standards of human behaviour as us lesser mortals. If the Genius beats his wife or runs four lovers at the same time or drinks himself stupid every night or propositions students, you smile and exercise forbearance because such human imperfections are the price of genius. That has always seemed to me like BS, and it's interesting to note how Walcott's ancient peccadilloes have come back to haunt him.

The other footnote: the only person so far to propose himself for a new election to the professorship is that Australian joker Clive James (apparently in all seriousness). James was funny in his early years in England, and a very sharp TV critic, but he soon began to take himself too seriously and became a celebrity, a chat-show guest and a poet. He's now a very tedious ex-wit, and anyone who has read his poetry will know just how desperate poetry's crisis has become.

doublespeak

So what do they want to do about North Korea's nuclear test this morning, apart from jumping up and down and saying how cross they are? (Which is pretty much the point, as far as the North Koreans are concerned.) The US, the UN, China and all the rest of them ... what can they do? Go and nuke Pyongyang?

If they tighten the screws on North Korea, next thing there'll be economic migrants pouring across the border into China, which nobody wants. If they lean more heavily on the North Korean regime, it will simply get more defiant and provocative. Pour down lectures and condemnations and harangues on Pyongyang, and old Kim will just snigger all the way to the bathroom.

It's like Shakespeare's impotent old king shaking his fist and saying: If you don't comply, I'll ... I'll ... I'll ... well, I don't know what I'll do, but I'll certainly do something.

Outside the self-righteous "international community" (the Gang of Five, or Eight, or Twenty, or whatever), the prevailing view on nuclear weapons is cynicism. The good guys have in effect said: OK, we've got our nuclear bombs, now the rest of you had better stop even thinking about getting yours, you hear?

Why? asks the rest of the world, led by North Korea and Iran. Because we say so, is the reply. Well, bad luck for you in that case, retort the unarmed nations, because we have just as much right to develop nuclear weapons as you. And as long as you go on pissing on us from a great height, we shall go on developing them.

And to that there is no convincing answer.

This is a big test for Barack Obama. Can he find the courage to stick to his campaign vision and talk to "enemies" on a basis of equality and respect? That's the only chance he has of getting a diplomatic process to stick, and to lead to results. But so far most of what he has said could just as well have been said by George W. Bush.

The nuclear-armed states never mention that they are obliged under international law to lead the way towards disarmament and a nuclear-free world. Not one of them has lifted a finger to start that process, and not one of them has any intention of doing so. They want a world in which they alone have the ultimate weaponry, and thus the ultimate power over all other states. That's why there is such a panic about Iran and North Korea (Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il with nuclear bombs? Shock horror. India and Pakistan are bad enough.)

But if the "international community" is refusing to carry out its obligations, why should anyone else exercise restraint?

So the issue is not North Korea: Kim is not going to drop a nuclear bomb on Seoul, and is more likely to blow himself up than harm anyone else. North Korea is a distraction, a symptom, not the disease itself. The real problem is the big picture of global nuclear disarmament. So long as that is swept under the carpet of political convenience, more and more states will acquire nuclear weapons in the coming years; the longer the problem drifts the harder it will be to solve; and the more likely it is to end in nuclear war.

If Obama does not start the process of disarmament, no one else will. He has to swallow enough pride to talk to Pyongyang and Tehran with respect, acknowledging their sovereign rights. He has to lean hard enough on American allies like Israel to stamp out already smouldering fuses. Will the American electorate even let him? Insects like Cheney are already crawling out of their holes to feed the public with renewed fears.

Obama's campaign rhetoric was inspiring. But if he doesn't follow up with action, how horrendous is the global backlash going to be.

adieu

I'll be taking down this blog in the next few days. Thanks to all the two or three people who have taken the trouble to glance at it from time to time, and to the people who have left comments on it, rude or otherwise. 

The cost of living

What you really really want to do with your life — paint, act, write, sing, travel the world, make movies — you can't do until you're too old to do it.

What you really really don't want to do with your life takes all your energy and time until you start to wobble and creak and wonder if it's really worth getting out of bed and where you left the walker.

Unless of course you are the sort of genius who can make a pile of money by doing exactly what you want to do. (I'm thinking more Pablo Picasso here, not Allen Stanford.)

Nothing of value pays your bills. The only thing that keeps you comfortable is drudgery.