This se­ries of ar­ti­cles has iden­ti­fied sys­temic short­com­ings that can and should be ad­dressed to make gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions more func­tion­al.

There is a hu­man di­men­sion. In­sti­tu­tions have no mem­o­ry. Mem­o­ry and op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty de­pend on the strength and ca­pac­i­ty of the peo­ple who man­age the in­sti­tu­tions and the sys­tems and pro­ce­dures that make them func­tion­al. In­sti­tu­tions need both sys­tems and peo­ple, and both must be up­grad­ed to align with chang­ing cir­cum­stances.

Fur­ther, in­sti­tu­tions have no in­ter­ests, but the peo­ple do. In­sti­tu­tions are pur­posed to ad­vance cit­i­zens’ in­ter­ests and rights, which can be broad­ly clas­si­fied as the na­tion­al in­ter­est. On com­ing in­to of­fice, all par­lia­men­tar­i­ans (sen­a­tors and mem­bers of the House) change their sta­tus from or­di­nary cit­i­zens to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple.

The par­lia­men­tary oath binds all par­lia­men­tar­i­ans “to con­sci­en­tious­ly and im­par­tial­ly” dis­charge their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the peo­ple of this na­tion. Min­is­ters and par­lia­men­tary sec­re­taries al­so swear to do “right to all man­ner of peo­ple with­out fear or favour, af­fec­tion or ill will.” That is the task of every par­lia­men­tar­i­an and pub­lic ser­vant (all gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials).

In­evitably con­flicts of in­ter­est will arise, but the na­tion­al in­ter­est is meant to trump po­lit­i­cal and per­son­al in­ter­ests. There will be dif­fer­ent views on what con­sti­tutes the best so­lu­tion. In­vari­ably, each so­lu­tion will af­fect sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty dif­fer­ent­ly and even the best-fit so­lu­tion will have down­sides.

The coun­try faces some dif­fi­cult is­sues. These in­clude an age­ing pop­u­la­tion, which chal­lenges the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the na­tion­al in­sur­ance pen­sion fund and the tax base; de­clin­ing oil and gas re­serves, which im­pact the fis­cal po­si­tion; a ris­ing mur­der rate and gun crime; a drug trans­ship­ment prob­lem; a creak­ing jus­tice sys­tem, which af­fects pub­lic con­fi­dence; and struc­tur­al im­bal­ances in the econ­o­my, which lead to ris­ing na­tion­al debt and de­clin­ing for­eign ex­change re­serves.

A coun­try’s true nat­ur­al re­sources are the re­silience and re­source­ful­ness of its peo­ple. A strong ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem re­in­forces these qual­i­ties if it is ap­pro­pri­ate­ly struc­tured. The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem has pock­ets of ex­cel­lence and is chal­lenged by a high dropout rate and low ex­am­i­na­tion suc­cess rates, which af­fect so­cial sta­bil­i­ty. Is the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem pro­duc­ing the skill sets to meet the de­mands of a chang­ing world?

There are no easy so­lu­tions, and change can­not take place quick­ly. It re­quires a ro­bust ap­proach con­sis­tent­ly ap­plied over time and a will­ing­ness to iden­ti­fy and cor­rect mis­takes. De­spite the cross-talk and boast­ing in Par­lia­ment, which par­ty has moved the nee­dle in ad­dress­ing any of these is­sues? Have the mil­lions spent on train­ing and re­sourc­ing pub­lic ser­vants en­sured these dif­fi­cult ar­eas are more force­ful­ly ad­dressed?

These are is­sues of mind­set, skill set, and pri­or­i­ties. Poli­cies to rem­e­dy these is­sues will cause dis­sat­is­fac­tion in the pop­u­la­tion seg­ments im­pact­ed by the knock-on im­ple­men­ta­tion ef­fects. Mit­i­gat­ing the dis­sat­is­fac­tion re­quires com­mu­ni­ca­tion with and feed­back from the af­fect­ed par­ties and clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed im­pacts and pol­i­cy ra­tio­nale. This does not mean that af­fect­ed par­ties will eas­i­ly ac­cept the change, as the ex­am­ples demon­strate.

First, many coun­tries face a de­mo­graph­ic chal­lenge as pop­u­la­tions age be­cause birth rates have de­clined. This has sev­er­al dif­fer­ent im­pacts. It will af­fect the per­for­mance of the na­tion­al econ­o­my as the num­ber of work­ing peo­ple will de­crease, as will tax­es, while the health­care ex­pens­es to care for the aged in­crease.

The first man­i­fes­ta­tion of the prob­lem is the fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of so­cial se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems. There are sev­er­al pol­i­cy so­lu­tions. First, to in­crease the re­tire­ment age and the so­cial se­cu­ri­ty con­tri­bu­tions in com­bi­na­tion or sep­a­rate­ly. Both mea­sures are un­pop­u­lar yet nec­es­sary. Longer-term mea­sures in­clude im­mi­gra­tion and var­i­ous in­cen­tives to in­crease the birth rate.

De­spite their marked­ly dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal sys­tems, France and Chi­na have at­tempt­ed to ad­dress this is­sue by chang­ing the re­tire­ment age in mod­est in­cre­ments. In France from 62 to 64, and in Chi­na from 60 to 63 for men, 50 to 55 for women in blue-col­lar jobs, and 55 to 58 for women in white-col­lar jobs. Mod­est changes. In France, the pro­pos­al was met with vi­o­lent protest and had to be forced through. While in Chi­na, it was met with out­rage on so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

Im­mi­gra­tion has not been con­tem­plat­ed in Chi­na, while in France it has led to the rise of the far-right po­lit­i­cal par­ty. This is where per­son­al and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests di­verge from the na­tion­al in­ter­est. If a de­ci­sion is un­pop­u­lar but in the na­tion­al in­ter­est, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans should make the best de­ci­sion.

Un­pop­u­lar poli­cies in the coun­try’s best long-term in­ter­est will in­vari­ably be avoid­ed if that pol­i­cy is con­sid­ered in­im­i­cal to a par­ty’s chances of elec­toral suc­cess. This ex­plains why the fi­nance min­is­ter first re­fused to recog­nise the fi­nan­cial im­pact of age­ing on the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board fi­nances.

Whilst he has be­lat­ed­ly ac­knowl­edged the prob­lem, there have been no pol­i­cy de­ci­sions, far less im­ple­men­ta­tion. A key el­e­ment of the UNC’s 2010 elec­tion cam­paign was op­pos­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the prop­er­ty tax. But it was not re­pealed. En­er­gy prices were strong, and there was enough fis­cal space to avoid im­ple­ment­ing the tax.

In 2015, the PNM cam­paign said that it would not im­ple­ment the tax but did so in its sec­ond term. In the 2025 bud­get speech, the min­is­ter dis­missed many crit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tions un­der the guise of pru­dence and prag­ma­tism. 

Mar­i­ano Browne is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness.