Dear Editor,

I write in regards to your excellent Editorial of Sunday, August 26, 2012 entitled “Yes, Minister”. Your editorial was spot on and I hope that the British High Commission in Belmopan sends a copy of it to London as advice in their deliberations to do away with Permanent Secretaries and opt for CEOs instead.

I just wanted to make one small correction though and offer my own little two cents:

Firstly, it is true that the UDP introduced the “Executive Officer” position, but it was during their 1993– 1998 term, not the 1984–1989 term, as you had stated. Unfortunately, the damage to the civil service had already been done long before that and, as you rightfully put it, “removed the guard from the front door in 1998, and left the vault open at the people’s bank when they changed the system from the PS to the CEO” in 1998.

The real damage was done with the Independence Constitution of September 1981 that removed the Permanent Secretaries and other key Heads of Departments from under the Public Services Commission and placed their appointments and terms of service under Section 107 of the Constitution that made them then become political appointees. The rest of the civil service still remained under Section 106 of the Constitution and the protection of the Public Services Commission Section 105 of the Constitution and ultimately of the Governor General, as it had been prior to Independence. The only difference prior to 1981 was that the Governor was the Head of the Public Service and not the Governor General.

Also back then, there was an Establishment Department that acted as the secretariat of the Public Services Commission. That department had no Minister, and prior to Independence, we did not have a Ministry of the Public Service with a Minister and a politically appointed PS or CEO at the head, as we do now. With the advent of the Ministry of the Public Service with its Minister and politically appointed CEO, political interference grew by leaps and bounds in the civil service. Hence the emasculation of the Public Services Commission to which you referred.

Sometimes the old way of doing things is the better way and this clearly is one example of that adage. We desperately need to move back to the old system of a professional civil service with Permanent Secretaries and Heads of Departments, whose appointments and terms of service are governed and managed by an independent and a non-political Public Services Commission, and where any appeals of its decisions, if necessary, can go to the Governor General and ultimately the courts of Belize. As it is written: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it.” Jeremiah 6:16.

Sincerely,
Glenda Parham