Coun­tries, like in­di­vid­u­als, suc­ceed by com­mit­ting to thought and study be­fore ac­tion. Oth­er­wise, theirs is the way of the ship with­out a pi­lot, "... drift­ing help­less­ly to­wards the rocks and to its doom."

Two years ago, the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment an­nounced Cab­i­net agree­ment to pro­vide $410 mil­lion in the 2013 bud­get for a Con­stituen­cy De­vel­op­ment Fund (CDF), with a $10 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion per MP for in­fra­struc­tur­al projects in each con­stituen­cy. He al­so ad­vised that the AG would pre­pare leg­is­la­tion to gov­ern the fund.

The late Pro­fes­sor John Spence re­spond­ed: "... in­tro­duc­tion of such a mea­sure ... in­volves con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues." He asked: "... why not at­tend to in­ef­fi­cien­cies in Cen­tral and lo­cal gov­ern­ment de­liv­ery of ser­vices rather than in­volv­ing MPs in this job to the detri­ment of their par­lia­men­tary du­ties?"

Lit­tle more was heard un­til the Prime Min­is­ter's con­fir­ma­tion a few days ago of a de­ci­sion to in­clude pro­vi­sions for the CDF in the 2014-2015 bud­get.Ab­sence of sub­stan­tive de­tails leads to ques­tions about whether is­sues iden­ti­fied by the Min­is­ter at the time and con­cerns raised by Pro­fes­sor Spence have been ad­dressed in the cur­rent CDF pro­pos­als.

Has the wis­dom of care­ful analy­sis and con­sid­ered thought in­flu­enced de­ci­sions about the fund? A CDF is a "... tool that ded­i­cates pub­lic mon­ey to ben­e­fit spe­cif­ic po­lit­i­cal sub­di­vi­sions (con­stituen­cies) through al­lo­ca­tions and/or spend­ing de­ci­sions in­flu­enced by their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment."

CDFs have been in ex­is­tence since the mid-1980s in an in­creas­ing num­ber of de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, in­clud­ing Ja­maica. Stud­ies query the ea­ger­ness of pol­i­cy­mak­ers to adopt CDFs, giv­en the pauci­ty of in­for­ma­tion on their long-term im­pact.What lit­tle is known seems to iden­ti­fy CDFs as pri­mar­i­ly po­lit­i­cal­ly dri­ven ini­tia­tives, hav­ing neg­a­tive im­pact on ac­count­abil­i­ty and ser­vice de­liv­ery, not sub­ject to ad­e­quate mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion and be­ing sources of cor­rup­tion.

Ad­vice is that they be ac­tive­ly dis­cour­aged in coun­tries where they are be­ing con­sid­ered, and in­stead, the op­tion of adopt­ing more ef­fec­tive ini­tia­tives be pur­sued to strength­en cen­tral and lo­cal ser­vice de­liv­ery.There are fun­da­men­tal con­cerns that CDFs breach the key de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ple of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­er be­tween the ex­ec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive arms by draw­ing MPs in­to bud­get im­ple­men­ta­tion re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, the do­main of the ex­ec­u­tive.

Such a dis­trac­tion like­ly weak­ens the over­sight ca­pac­i­ty of leg­is­la­tures and com­pro­mis­es their abil­i­ty to rep­re­sent the elec­torate. CDFs al­so ef­fec­tive­ly erode the ca­pac­i­ty of lo­cal gov­ern­ment to con­tribute to ser­vice de­liv­ery and de­vel­op­ment, dis­plac­ing fund­ing that might oth­er­wise have gone to lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, and im­pos­ing ad­di­tion­al, un­planned ad­min­is­tra­tive and mon­i­tor­ing bur­dens. It is ques­tion­able, too, whether CDFs dis­trib­ute al­lo­ca­tions as pro­gres­sive­ly as oth­er mech­a­nisms.

Oth­er is­sues in­clude use of CDF al­lo­ca­tions and project se­lec­tion to in­flu­ence the re­sults of elec­tions and mis­align­ment of CDF projects with lo­cal de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties.Chron­ic weak­ness­es in our ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, gov­er­nance and ser­vice de­liv­ery sys­tems are well known.The last thing we need is an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal mis­ad­ven­ture which re­in­forces these short­com­ings.

Bet­ter we fix and strength­en our bro­ken gov­er­nance sys­tems and pur­sue de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion pro­grammes more vig­or­ous­ly.

Win­ston Rud­der

Pe­tit Val­ley