Max­ie Cuffie

"Pub­lic ap­point­ment and pa­tron­age, are in­te­gral to all lev­els of gov­ern­ment in the Unit­ed King­dom. The sys­tem ex­tends from the cen­tre of pow­er, where some un­elect­ed min­is­ters still hold ma­jor of­fices of state, down to the lev­el of lo­cal au­thor­i­ties and lo­cal ser­vices. This is the case in all mod­ern democ­ra­cies..."

Gov­ern­ment by Ap­point­ment: Open­ing Up The Pa­tron­age State. Re­port of the House of Com­mons Se­lect Com­mit­tee, 2003.

I do not know Dr Anselm Lon­don and there may very well be good rea­sons why he should not be hired to ad­vise young Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Joel Jack in the new po­si­tion. None of these rea­sons, how­ev­er, have been ar­tic­u­lat­ed so far in the pub­lic de­bate.

When I joined the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al as ad­vis­er, pol­i­cy and me­dia re­search, in April 2003, there was a mi­nor furor over my com­pen­sa­tion pack­age, which was then $27,500. The base com­pen­sa­tion was then rough­ly equiv­a­lent to the salary of a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter.

I had not asked for the job and had been re­cruit­ed by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Glen­da More­an-Phillips, whom, pri­or to the in­ter­view at which the of­fer was made, I had nev­er met. She had read my work and thought I had skills which she des­per­ate­ly need­ed. I told her she could not af­ford me and sug­gest­ed oth­er can­di­dates who I sug­gest­ed were equal­ly ca­pa­ble and more af­ford­able.

She in­sist­ed and I even­tu­al­ly agreed on the grounds that there should be no loss of in­come. The salary I even­tu­al­ly set­tled on and which was even­tu­al­ly agreed to by the Gov­ern­ment's chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer (CPO), who de­cides on these mat­ters, was based on a month­ly pay­ment to ap­prox­i­mate my an­nu­al com­pen­sa­tion of $375,515.87 from my pre­vi­ous em­ploy­er.

My com­pen­sa­tion then with the CCN Group in­clud­ed base salary and bonus. I was al­so en­ti­tled to an ex­ec­u­tive med­ical plan at CCN which the CPO said was on­ly of­fered to min­is­ters and per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and which I had to for­go.

The mat­ter was raised by for­mer op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Robin Mon­tano, who did not ques­tion my qual­i­fi­ca­tions or ex­pe­ri­ence, or even whether I could com­mand the salary, but asked whether the job had been ad­ver­tised. It is a sim­i­lar ar­gu­ment that has been em­ployed now as ques­tions are be­ing raised over the pro­posed em­ploy­ment by the THA of for­mer fi­nance sec­re­tary Lon­don, as an ad­vis­er to the Sec­re­tary for Fi­nance.

This is a po­lit­i­cal ad­vis­er po­si­tion and nowhere in the world, whether in the West­min­ster tra­di­tion which we fol­low, or in the US pres­i­den­tial sys­tem where they are even more preva­lent, are such po­si­tions filled by ad­ver­tise­ment. The first re­quire­ment for any­one fill­ing the post is that the per­son must en­joy the trust and con­fi­dence of the of­fice-hold­er.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment in Par­lia­ment made in April 2011, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar hired a num­ber of ad­vis­ers with salaries rang­ing from $20,000 to $40,000 a month, with none of the po­si­tions be­ing ad­ver­tised, in keep­ing with the con­ven­tion for such po­si­tions.

Not one of them even ap­prox­i­mat­ed Lon­don's qual­i­fi­ca­tions or ex­pe­ri­ence, since apart from be­ing a for­mer fi­nance sec­re­tary, he has al­so worked in Cana­da and the OECS re­gion and once served as a deputy di­rec­tor of the African De­vel­op­ment Bank. Any­one who knows about fi­nan­cial con­sul­tants, es­pe­cial­ly in the field of de­vel­op­men­tal eco­nom­ics, would know that they do not come at $60,000 a month.

Much has been made of the fact that Lon­don is the cousin of the THA's Chief Sec­re­tary, which can­not se­ri­ous­ly mean that he is dis­qual­i­fied from ever do­ing any work for the THA, es­pe­cial­ly in a field for which he is well qual­i­fied.

Are we to be­lieve that our con­cept of in­tegri­ty in pub­lic life, which al­lows a prime min­is­ter to spend over $1 mil­lion in a year on her sis­ter's em­ploy­ment as a trav­el as­sis­tant, can­not coun­te­nance the em­ploy­ment of a high­ly-qual­i­fied fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er for $60,000 a month? And for a po­si­tion in which a com­pen­sa­tion con­sul­tant has ad­vised the salary should be $90,000?

While the lit­er­a­ture sug­gests such ap­point­ments may be sus­cep­ti­ble to abuse (and we have seen our share of ex­am­ples), they have al­so been shown to be quite ben­e­fi­cial when the per­sons se­lect­ed are well qual­i­fied.

In Par­ti­san Ap­pointees and Pub­lic Ser­vants, An In­ter­na­tion­al Analy­sis of the Role of the Po­lit­i­cal Ad­vis­er, Eich­baum and Shaw quot­ed from a UK par­lia­men­tary re­port which stat­ed:

"We al­so heard ev­i­dence from civ­il ser­vants and oth­ers of the ben­e­fits that spe­cial ad­vis­ers can bring: they can for ex­am­ple pro­tect civ­il ser­vants by car­ry­ing out work that might raise doubts about civ­il ser­vice neu­tral­i­ty. They may al­so pro­vide valu­able in­sight which can im­prove pol­i­cy by pro­vid­ing a po­lit­i­cal di­men­sion. Pol­i­cy has to work in the re­al world, and a good spe­cial ad­vis­er can help con­tribute to this re­al­i­ty check."

This is a coun­try which al­lows tens of mil­lions to be paid to lawyers (and not just British QCs) in pur­suit of ques­tion­able le­gal ac­tion which bring no ben­e­fit to the lo­cal tax­pay­ers. If I could have ten per cent of that, I would be able to af­ford a Rolls Royce and in­vest in mil­lion-dol­lar re­al es­tate.

An­oth­er spe­cious ar­gu­ment ad­vanced is over the per­for­mance of the To­ba­go econ­o­my un­der Lon­don's stew­ard­ship. When one con­sid­ers that the re­cruit­ment of Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Lar­ry Howai has cost this coun­try $10 mil­lion in ex-gra­tia pay­ments through First Cit­i­zens, with no boon yet to the per­for­mance of the econ­o­my, Lon­don's $60,000 a month sounds like a very good deal.

Max­ie Cuffie runs a me­dia con­sul­tan­cy, In­te­grat­ed Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, is an eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School as a Ma­son Fel­low in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment.