Opinion: Jobs for the Boys???

As per usual there has been no shortage of drama in paradise over the last few weeks.

The hot gossip of late has been about the strange inability of Fiji First to produce an audited set of accounts. All sorts of theories ran wild but now we know why!

In the lead up to the election there were rumours of desperate and very aggressive FF fund raising efforts. It was also clear that several previous supporters had either fallen out of favour or could see the proverbial “writing on the wall”. That clearly didn’t stop FF general secretary from running up the credit, presumably on the promise that they would return to power and pay their bills. Kind of reflective of the way they ran government! It is not over yet, the accounts are still being verified and while the auditors are apparently confident FF can raise the $1.6 million deficit, that will be difficult in opposition.

This mess reflects the extreme top-down leadership in play within Fiji First and this is particularly the case with the general administration of the party that operated at the whim of the general secretary.

It also reflects the challenge faced by the new Government with the civil service. Remember a democratic transparent government requires a competent civil or public service to implement policies and change. The previous government driven exclusively by two, well actually over the last couple of years, one man, ripped the heart out of the civil service replacing anyone with any ability or integrity with increasingly young bureaucrats who didn’t have the experience or knowledge to do anything but follow orders. The result is that we are left with the façade or shell of government that has no money and limited competence to solve the huge range of problems we face as a nation.

There has been some criticism of the new coalition government with the regards the pace of change, but we suspect that long term, this more measured approach to what is a massive problem will prove wise.

Over the last few weeks, we have seen the appointment of new Permanent Secretaries and there has been much critical comment on the racial composition, gender, and age of the appointees’ but what hasn’t been discussed so freely is competence. Let’s examine the facts around some of these criticisms. The glaring disparity is gender, of the 23, (we are including Secretary to cabinet in the list) only seven are women, a real concern. The calibre and qualifications of the seven is impressive, YB can’t wait to see what Selina Kuraleca does with Education, so any suggestion that there is insufficient talent looks dubious.

A lot has been made of the racial make up of the appointments with one commentator hysterically describing it as “workplace ethnic cleansing”. The facts suggest that the racial breakdown is in fact close to the national split of around 65% itaukei, 30% indo Fijian and 5% from other communities. Fourteen Permanent secretaries are itaukei around 61%, seven are indo Fijian that’s 30% and two from other communities just over 8%. It seems ugly and old fashioned to be even talking in these terms. The core issue is that the civil service desperately needs an injection of experience and competence and while we don’t claim to know all the new appointments, those we do know bring these qualities.

As an extension to government, let’s move to the semi government or the state-owned enterprise space. These are entities that are owned or at least controlled by Government. This sector has always been too big with these “public” bodies taking on many roles that the private sector could and

should be running. Under the previous government we saw an explosion in this area with bodies like Walesi being formed and chewing up huge amounts of taxpayer’s funds.

It is also an area of the economy that has a long history of mismanagement and plain fraud. At the heart of this is the fact that repeated governments have not understood or perhaps ignored the need to appoint competent people to the boards of these critical organisations.

Appointing board directors is something that has been taken far too lightly in the past. After all what does a board director do apart from turn up, consume large amounts of food, and pass the occasional motion, that’s the minuted kind of motion! Little wonder that our infrastructure, much of it under the control of these state-owned entities, is in such a sorry state.

No surprise then, that Ministers in the past have been tempted to think that board appointments are a great way of rewarding friends and repaying political favours. This ignores the obligations of a board director that start with being personally accountable for the decisions made by the board and subsequent performance of the entity.

So, if we are going to fix our ongoing infrastructure issues it begins with appointing competent boards and that starts with understanding what a “competent “board should look like. Each board must include combination of technical, legal, and financial expertise and depending on the challenges facing the organisation experience in key risk areas. For example, if restructuring is required then someone with human resource expertise would be useful. Finally, the mix needs to reflect the consumers of this public service or product, and this is where gender and ethnic diversity becomes critical. In short selecting a board is an art and it certainly can’t be a place where we park has beens and political schmoozers.

YB is encouraged by recent comments made by Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica on this subject but in truth, despite the high hopes many had for this Government being able to take advantage of the considerable good will and enthusiasm shown by many Fijians in wanting to help the rebuild process, its record in appointing competent boards, with a few exceptions, is patchy.

At the heart of their dilemma was the unfortunate decision to include board positions in the negotiations to form the new government an issue that raised its ugly head again in the last week.

We have been promised competence is top of the agenda in appointing boards. However, particularly, in some of the earlier boards the definition of “competent” seems loose and YB is conscious that several highly “competent “potential board members have been ignored despite putting their hands up.

This is a new government and many of the ministers are understandably a bit naïve. As we highlighted earlier, support, in the form of knowledge and experience from the civil servants, is limited so mistakes will be made. We have noted some early blunders have been quietly fixed with early appointees being moved on, but it is an area where the governments report card would read, “needs to do better”.