Appointment of Finance and Education Ministers
Post Cabinet Press Briefing
Appointment of Finance and Education Ministers
On
October 30, 2024
—————————————————————————————-
Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP, DLP, Prime Minister:
This morning I’m reminded that today is a pivotal day in Jamaican history, the 30th of October. I take you back to the year 1980 when the Jamaica Labour Party won what was described then as a landslide victory. Then, I believe the largest margin won by any political party of the time, but it is more remembered for the deliverance campaign. It was also remembered as a time when Jamaica pivoted from a particular type and style of governance, and it is usually well regarded as a period of time for the rescue and recovery of the Jamaican economy.
I start there by pointing out this time in history because we are also in a long campaign for the rescue and recovery of Jamaica and which we have been doing a wonderful job in that regard but we’re also at a point of pivot, a point of inflection, a point where we are poised for even greater change. I know that a number of Jamaicans have been waiting apparently with bated breath for these very few words that I am about to utter.
I am pleased to announce the following appointments:
The Honourable Fayval Williams, MP, will assume duties as Minister of Finance and the Public Service.
Senator, Dr The Honourable Dana Morris Dixon will assume duties as Minister of Education, Skills, Youth, and Information.
And Mr Matthew Samuda, MP, will re-assume his role as Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation.
These appointments are designed to maintain stability and minimize disruption in the functioning of the government, but at the same time pivot towards a growth oriented economic policy as well as to make a priority and focus of human capital development.
To help drive this pivot towards growth, I have assigned my senior advisor, Mr Alok Jain, who is highly regarded for his financial expertise to work closely with the Minister of Finance, newly minted Minister Fayval Williams, as well as with other private sector stakeholders.
Also, the consolidation of the skills portfolio including HEART with Education will help to drive our focus on human capital development and to better integrate technical and vocational skills training into the education system. Mr Matthew Samuda as Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation will continue the significant progress we have made in the provision of water and environmental protection.
I have a few other and a few other announcements to make. I’m just giving you some time to process. I’m also announcing the date for the by-election in the constituencies of Trelawny Southern and St Andrew Northwestern. Nomination day will be Wednesday, November 6th, 2024 and election day will be Friday, November 22nd, 2024 for both constituencies. I encourage all eligible voters to exercise their constitutional right to vote and participate actively in the democratic process.
There are two other announcements to be made, and I invite the minister of local government and the respective chairmen of the municipal authorities in question to come to the podium.
Honourable Desmond McKenzie CD, MP, JP, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development:
Morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m joined by the mayor of Morant Bay and the mayor of May Pen.
As it relates to the two vacancies in the St Thomas Municipal Corporation and in the Clarendon Municipal Corporation, both mayors have consulted and have advised and have asked me to announce that the 6th of November, Nomination Day and the 22nd of November will be election day for both divisions respectively in the St Thomas and Clarendon Municipal Corporation. I will also use the same words of the Prime Minister by urging electorates in both divisions to go out and cast their votes.
Mahiri Stewart, Nationwide News:
Good morning, Prime Minister. My question is, what went behind making the decision to make Fayval Williams our new minister of finance and Dana Morris Dixon, our new education minister, and when was this decision made?
Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP, DLP, Prime Minister:
Well, the decision is effectively made now. If you’re wondering when my mind settled on these things, maybe five minutes ago. No, the truth is that the prime ministerial prerogative to determine members of the Cabinet is not beyond the questioning of the public and I appreciate the question. Minister Fayval Williams, you will recall, was actually a minister in the ministry of finance. If my memory serves me correct, you were a minister of state and then a minister without portfolio and served with distinction at that time, so she’s not new to the portfolio.
If you were to look at her resume, her resume does recommend her to the position. In addition, just to be clear, this business of people presenting their academic qualifications as a basis for political office is not something that I necessarily make a priority in the decision, but the truth is that the stakeholder community that she will serve specifically would want to know that someone who is going to be in that area has some technical competence. And so, I don’t think there could be any question about Minister Williams’s technical competence in that field but more than that, she also has practical experience. She worked in the financial sector for many years. She is a businessperson and has the experience of starting her own business and therefore, she would understand quite a bit about business.
Now, just to be clear, the Ministry of Finance is not only about business. As you would recall, a large part of the effort of the former Minister of Finance was in dealing with the unions and the wage issues and there is something called the public sector that has to be properly managed and so that person has to have skills in institution building and so forth. The idea of course is to ensure that whoever is in the Ministry of Finance is a disciple of the government’s policy of fiscal discipline, that is what is really important. I could never put anyone there who is going to in any way depart from the hard-earned gains and sacrifice of the Jamaican people to get us to where we are today and I’m confident that Minister Williams is a disciple.
My life experience in growing up, sometimes people say I should tell it more, in a one-bedroom board house in Spanish Town, my mother, a civil servant for many years, a single mother trying to send two kids to school; if you ask me what my financial philosophy is, it’s about being frugal. It’s about making the most that you can out of the least resources that you have so it’s also about efficiency and we never borrowed. I don’t like debt but of course, debt is important, but you have to be able to manage it so whoever is going to be the Minister of Finance has to have that similar kind of outlook. We’re not going to put the country in debt. We’re going to manage our affairs properly. We’re going to be efficient, and we’re going to be respectful of the sacrifice and hard work of people and I think that Minister Williams would meet that criterion.
Clearly, there are other persons in the Cabinet who I could have considered. The decision would also be on the basis of what would be the least disruptive to the operations of the government and if I were to start to move the ministers around too often, projects that they have started that they need to see through things that are important to achieve that could be disrupted and it could set the government behind so clearly we look at competence, we look at the fit for purpose, but we also look at the overall operations of the government to make sure it is seamless.
We don’t necessarily analyze the government’s operation in an accurate way all the time and the truth is that this administration has been probably the most stable administration we have had in the history of Jamaica. We have managed to make massive changes, seamless, don’t skip a beat, without disruption and that can only enure to the benefit of the people of the country. So, stability is an important part of any decision that we are going to make and I’m certain that this decision will enure to the stability and continuity of government but bear in mind what I have said and take it seriously.
The government is engineering a pivot, a pivot towards accelerated growth. It’s a pivot towards an aggressive pursuit of growth and believe me when I say we’re going to be vicious in that regard. We have conquered the fiscal issues, now it’s time to conquer the growth issues.
Naomi Francis, Press Secretary:
Thank you, Prime Minister. Very important intervention. We have two other questions. May I just acknowledge the presence of the Deputy Prime Minister, who is also here with us, Dr Horace Chang. And I’m sure that many persons online are saying that the historical value of the moment is also not lost, Minister Williams being the first full female Minister of Finance.
Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP, DLP, Prime Minister:
But it’s important to note that the decision was not made on that basis.
Sashana Small, Gleaner:
Prime Minister, there was some speculation that you were in fact considering taking this post as well. Is there any truth to that?
Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP, DLP, Prime Minister:
This is a challenge I’m having sometimes when I read the commentary. How does a speculation become a truth? I’ve seen this argument about the possibility of me taking over the Ministry of Finance. It is always in my purview as Prime Minister to take over any ministry I choose. Then there is this issue of conflict of interest. Just think about it, all the ministers are accountable to me in any event, but would it make sense for the prime minister who has been indicating from more than a year now, and I’ve been saying these things very clearly in the hopes that those people who write the headlines would pick them up that Jamaica has to pivot. I’ve used those exact words that the new shift is to peace, productivity to create the virtuous cycle for prosperity that we’re going to pivot to grow.
Would it make sense that I am going to then take on the Ministry of Finance when the pivot now has to be growth? And would it also make sense for me to add an additional burden if I didn’t give up the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation to the already very substantial portfolio that I lead? I think people forget that I am a minister. I function like all the other ministers and I have the largest ministry that is delivering the jobs, the infrastructure, the environmental protection, the housing, which is moving rapidly. Yes, I am a minister, and I function as a minister in addition to doing the job of the prime minister. I’m not going to take on any more specific burdens right now especially when the focus now shifts to really cranking up the growth agenda and the growth agenda has several elements to it.
A critical element which we have laid the groundwork for when we put in place a commission to do a review of the education sector is education, that’s a critical element to the growth agenda. Believe it or not, the greatest constraint to growth at this moment is labour. We don’t have enough, and we have underemployment of labour as well, and we don’t have enough skills to drive growth, so this issue of human capital development requires laser like attention. That is where my energy and focus is going to be along with the newly appointed minister of education and skills.
And then another constraint on our growth boundary is bureaucracy. We are going to have to pivot now to look at the ease of doing business. Put it another way, the cost of doing business in Jamaica. All the processes and the red tape and all the institutions that we have put on that have put on more regulation that is just slowing down and hampering business, we have to cut out all of those things now.
And then we also must now look at being in an aggressive posture to take advantage of economic opportunities that may arise. And then we must also adopt another posture of creating new industries and the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation will play a pivotal role in the creation of new industries. In fact, the Office of the Prime Minister will play that coordinating role. There is a job of work to be done which is slightly different from the work that we are focused on in our last two administrations which is to get the fiscal arrangements of the economy right, to get the economy stable, to get the economy to a level of resilience where it can respond and recover quickly, and I think we have settled that. Let’s shift now to the other agenda.
And in all of that, we cannot forget the most important thing, which is the pain points, the suffering of the people of Jamaica. It’s one thing to drive on the fancy highways that we have built, but when you come off them and then you have to be rocking in the pothole filled roads, you’re upset. We understand. We get it, but we are not going to be like other governments who tell you that we’re going to do it and can’t do it. If it’s one thing you can know about this government, if we tell you we’re going to do it, it’s going to get done because we have figured out the way to make sure that whatever we say, we back it up with resources.
We understand that care is about saying you care, but care is also about showing you care. We get criticized because we don’t say we care enough, but we do show that we care and so you’re going to get the government that does both. We’re going to tell you we care and that’s the populism that any government can give you but we’re going to show you we care by managing the economy well and getting the resources to spend on the challenges that you face.
So, when we are making much about the new buses that we have bought, that’s a tangible way to show we care and we’re going to expand that right across Jamaica and we’re going to help people with transportation to reduce the cost of living that they face. When we talk about caring in healthcare, Minister Tufton was here, we’re going to be spending quite a bit of resources in healthcare to show that we really care. We are actually very focused on putting back the care in healthcare.
Kelesha Williams, Television Jamaica:
I have two questions, Mr Holness, one for you and one for Minister Williams. You announced a by election for South Trelawny, can you say who will be your party’s candidate for that constituency? I’m hearing on the ground that the former member of Parliament, Marisa Dalrymple Philibert may be making a comeback. Can you say, if yes, why is she making a comeback after resigning? And also, why did you wait so long to announce a by-election for that constituency? And for Minister Williams, big post as Finance Minister; what will be your first priority?
Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP, DLP, Prime Minister:
Put it to you this way, by popular demand of the constituency Marisa Dalrymple Philibert will be the Jamaica Labour Party’s candidate for Trelawny Southern. It’s difficult to speak for Marisa as to why she resigned and then she’s coming back, and I’m certain she will give an explanation, but my own view is that she really respected the perspectives of the public with whatever accusations were laid in the public domain and she thought it was the honourable thing to do. But I think that as she went through the constituency and people kept demanding that she return and she does have quite a popular support in the constituency so it’s really the will of the people, and we will see the will of the people exercised in the by election.
In terms of why I waited, the prerogative of calling an election is given to the Prime Minister and there are some rules around it but in calling the elections the latitude that is given is given for a reason which is to allow and always allow for the Prime Minister to protect the government that is formed. And in the discussions that are had, sometimes that is lost that our system of government is designed for stability and continuity of the government and so the Prime Minister exercises that authority to ensure that the government that is formed can continue and so you want to be sure that whenever you call an election, you are in a good position to win it; and that’s just the reality. You want to be sure that you are in a position that your government can continue.
That doesn’t speak to any disenfranchisement of the democratic process. It is the nature of our democracy, which is why our democracy is stable. And when I’m saying our democracy, our system of democracy is the most stable type of democracy that there is precisely because there is this allowance. Just to be clear, however, the people of Southern Trelawny were never deprived of any representational benefits that would accrue from having their member of parliament. Provisions were in place to ensure that whatever benefits that would come to constituents who are in need or whatever service they needed, that those services would continue.
Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you so much for your attention.