Opposition Leader and leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Mr. Edward Seaga, was special guest at The Gleaner's Editors Forum on Tuesday, September 10. The following are excerpts of Mr. Seaga's answers in response to questions posed by editors, senior reporters and columnists.

ON POLITICAL UNITY

We are building some critical levers which will lock in the gains this time to ensure that there will be no more retreat. One is the politics of the country. It speaks to a level of political unity that does not exist, and while in an adversarial system you are never going to have true and deep political unity, and indeed you don't want it, what's the purpose of having everybody thinking one way, somebody has to be on the alternative, but you do want greater political unity, and that deeper political unity must come symbolically from the top which in effect means that the Governor-General must be a symbol of that unity.

The Governor-General at the present time, the Head of State that has vice regal powers, is not at this time a person who is a symbol of national unity because he is politically selected. And being politically selected he acts politically. There is no question about that. I mean, you have had Governors-General who have been less political and we have some that have been more. I won't characterise them, but the position known as Governor-General is such that we do not have a true symbol of that unity.

Now, as a symbol of national unity, he can perform functions. His role is to hold a balance of power in delicate areas of national life, and in those delicate areas where he is called upon to make decisions in selecting personnel for various important agencies of Government, he can now do so as an independent person without the necessity of going the route -- well you wouldn't want to not go the route of consultation, but he is free and independent to take a decision.

Although the mechanism sets out that role of consultation now, the fact of the matter is that he does what the Prime Minister wants and that is the weakness of the system. All the consultations take place then you do what the Prime Minister wants. So we are cutting that knot, we are cutting that linkage which will then create a picture or a situation in the society, a scenario in which the other areas of interest in the development of Government can feel that they have a better role to play, a bigger role to play, because they are not going to be blocked off by political manoeuvres, they are not going to be blocked off by the political decision-makers and so on, because there is a true and truly independent person at the head.

A Governor-General in that position would choose the persons who are the members of the Police Services Commission, would choose the members who are going to make up the Judicial Services Commission, the Public Services Commission and all the other sensitive bodies, and civil society will feel that they have a much deeper role to play.

ON DISMANTLING TWO JAMAICAS

The last one is my personal contention in the society is that we are not one people, that we are in fact two, and I have lived that life, I have lived both lives. In my earlier days when I did research work I learned about the other Jamaica, I lived it, I experienced it, and that brought me into politics to see how indeed we can create one Jamaica from these two Jamaicas, and the point at which I would like to get one Jamaica meeting is in a quality of life that is reasonable for all.

At the present time one of the greatest divides that exist in the country is the divide of inequality in quality of life with people who have to suffer the bad roads, the lack of water supply, the unaffordable health services, the poor education system, et cetera.

Seventy per cent of this country has had the experience of going through a poor education system that has not changed from the day that (Florizel) Glasspole opened the doors of primary schools to secondary education. Because, when the time came to lock that in, Edwin Allen did so and he found that he had to make provision for 30 per cent of the spaces to be for the traditional secondary schools and the other 70 per cent were primary schools. So what he was saying is 30 per cent of the youngsters who are going into the secondary schools already come out of that system where there is good education. The other 70 per cent are reserved, although if you didn't have a reservation it would still be so.

So this 70/30 ratio has existed from then and it exists today, because you have this amazing, amazing statistics that 74.7 per cent of all students who take the CXC Exam do not have even one pass, not even one pass. How can you call that an education system. What do you spend five, six years in secondary school for; what you pay school fees for? This is not an education system it's a living lie.

So that to provide an education system that is quality, education for all, is one of the ways in which you create two Jamaicas, and what an abundance of talent you would unearth, what a different society we would have if everybody was educated. There are different levels, of course, but certainly not in the way that we have now an uneducated great majority and a small minority that are educated, but it goes beyond the education and infrastructure.

There is a whole intolerance, cultural intolerance, a cultural intolerance between those who live up town and those who live downtown, those who live in the rural areas and those who live in the city, those who have and those who do not have. The cultural forms, the cultural traditions are neither respected nor tolerated and we don't live together. As a matter of fact, we don't even like each other, that's how the society really pans out, and that's not how you build a nation.

ON GOVERNANCE

I want to turn to the governance sector of the manifesto, because this has received no response at all or interest, but I think it is where we will see some new movement. I have already set out the reasoning for the independent Governor-General, or independent Head of State, whatever the designation of the post will be. There are other provisions in here (the manifesto). For instance, that the number of Ministers and Ministers of State should not be more than one half of the total number of the Members of Parliament in the House of Representatives. So that the back bench must always be bigger than the Executive arm. The Leader of the House must not be a Minister of Government, must be someone who holds ministerial rank but would be someone who would be drawn from the back bench and be independent of the Executive.

So there is an arm's length relationship between the Executive and the Parliament. Now, this might not be a total disconnect, and I don't see how you can work when there is no total disconnection, but at the same time it creates that space, that arm's length position where the Parliament can be more independent of the Executive.

ON MINISTERIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

I never had the benefit of measuring in the past all these corruption commissioning and this, that and the other commission, I just had one weapon to use and that was the anger of Edward Seaga, and people don't cross me on that one, they just don't cross me. My Ministers will tell you they lived in little apartments, they never got any big houses and how they suffered under me, but we had to do it, we had to do it. The country was going through a serious phase of sacrifice and you have to lead from the top. So if you want to know how you do it, lead from the top. If you want to stop corruption, lead from the top. All the corruption commissions and so on are mechanisms, but lead from the top and the mechanisms don't have any work to do.

ON THE FUTURE

I do not travel with a timetable in my pocket. I tell you that quite frankly. I have a vision, and that vision is clearly spelt out here (in the manifesto).

It's a vision that is reflective of my frustration. I have spent 40 years in this system and I expected to see much better done at this stage, and I do not hold myself or my party responsible for what has not happened, because we did our part.

Every time the Jamaica Labour Party has been in power it has improved the situation. Every time we have given up power we have left Jamaica in a better position than we inherited it. Every time the PNP has taken over, the system has deteriorated and they have left Jamaica in a worse position than when they took it over. So I do not hold myself and my party responsible for what has not happened in the 40 years. But I have the frustration of a man who decided early in his life not to go the route that I could have gone.

Starting out with Chris Blackwell I could have gone the same route. I could have been where Chris Blackwell is, or been somebody very important in the field of music and culture. I decided not to. I decided to go the route of public life because I saw public life as the arena in which I could expound policies and implement policies that would help to close this awkward gap that I encountered when I lived for three-and-a-half years in rural and urban inner city communities, and on that basis there is a mission to be fulfilled. And I have said I might not see the end of this fulfilment, rather doubt that I would, but I want to see it. This is the blueprint.

What I want to see now is to move beyond the blueprint and to start the groundwork, and then I want to see the locking in of what we do in a way that there will be no future reversal. If I thought that what we are to do now is simply to take Jamaica out of the hole that it is in and put it back on track, and there is no way to lock in the gains, I won't bother to waste my time because surely there will be attempts to pull it apart again.

ON SUCCESSION

In so far as seeing successors, that's not for me, that's for the people. The people have to determine that. What I do intend to do is to use the Senate to expand, to expand our options, because I do believe that we can be enriched by options that we have not explored. I am not designating by that, that this person appointed to the Senate will be any successor, but I believe that the Senate must be made greater use of.

We have never had a Parliament in which we have had a Senate as good as the 1983 Senate which were appointed on the basis of finding those persons who could make a very useful contribution to debate and thinking, and that Senate as a model is something I want to reproduce. I cannot have a Senate in which we have a lot of outside people, because the Senate, if you are in opposition, is safeguard.

If you are a Government you have far more latitude. I do not select the independent senators, a Prime Minister does. I proposed that idea in constitutional reform, it has been adopted and used by the present Government, but an independent Governor-General would make those appointments. I would hope that in such a case that the independent Governor-General would have some regard for any suggestions that I would make. For instance, I would have no hesitation in recommending Bruce Golding as an independent Senator.

ON TACKLING CRIME

First of all, crime has to be tackled on two fronts. The short term to medium term, and the medium term to long term. In the short term to medium term, the immediate improvements that will come are from a depoliticised police force.

There is absolutely no question in our mind that politics is making the police force far less effective than it can be, because politics directs who gets promoted, therefore who does whose bidding to get promoted and all the other ramifications of that. And to the extent that you cut that cord that people get promoted on merit, then their work will be geared towards achieving the meritorious results that they would need for promotion. Promotion is the driving force in every career and that is one.

Secondly, the system lacks intelligence. I don't mean intelligence in the sense of learning, I mean criminal intelligence. What passes for Special Branch now, forget it. What was left of Special Branch was decimated. They were farmed out all over the place and what's there is recognisably not a unit that can provide you with any adequate intelligence.

The next step would be to link all the intelligence arms in the criminal justice system to provide one strong intelligence unit. Now, that national intelligence agency has to be structured in a certain way, it has to be structured on the basis that the Chairman is not a member of the criminal justice system, not someone who is either a Police Commissioner, a Chief of Staff or whatever.

The Chairman must be an independent person but a person with great respect, and that person would be Chairman over a board that would be comprised of the Police Commissioner, the Chief of Staff and a representative of the Attorney General's Department.

The third area is better equipment and accommodation. In travelling around the rural areas, it is shameful to see he scandalous accommodation the police have to work with, and there is much to be done in equipping the police stations in the rural areas and equipping the police with better equipment.

The medium to long term is an education system that does not turn out illiterates who hang out on the corners or who get pregnant early, and an economy that provides job opportunities so that you don't have to turn to crime as the way in which you going to earn a living.

ON FIXING DOWNTOWN

Everybody is trying to find a solution downtown by finding out what you do with the higglers, where you put the higglers. The fact of the matter is you are not fighting higglers, you are fighting a culture, you are fighting a sub-culture; a sub-culture in which the greater spirit of entrepreneurship that exist in this country is not at the level of the captains of industry, it's at the level of the higglers.

They are the ones who start with nothing, make something, send five children to school, many of whom come out as doctors and lawyers and what not and pull everybody up. Now, we're not going to destroy that. I am not going to destroy that and put them in another market outside of where the customers trod.

The problem is that there is not enough turnover downtown to be able to provide for higgler and those who operate, the merchants who operate in the shops. If you look historically at Kingston, Kingston is a waterfront port. Kingston was accustomed to getting its stimulation and energy for growth from the ships that were in the harbour from the days of pirates, from Port Royal days. That is how Kingston grew.

The colonial powers sent their ships here to power raw materials in and out of the port. Kingston never developed from the mountains. Now we have locked off Kingston with the traffic problem at Half-Way Tree, the traffic problem at Cross Roads. You can't get from uptown to downtown so we create another uptown version of Kingston and we isolate downtown. Downtown does not have enough financial energy in the system.

The Fort Augusta project is the most important project that any government can do. It is where you can put in new investment that will create new opportunities that will create the new jobs, that will create the new turnover and make a bigger space, a bigger economic space for everybody to operate. You cannot make downtown Kingston work with what is there. You have too many dogs trying to get at the same bone; so the downtown Kingston area has limited possibilities.

Sure you can build some more markets, sure you can reposition the higglers, but you're going to keep the army there to keep them there, because they are going to go where the dollar is and nobody is going to prevent that, too many hungry mouths, too many children to be educated, too many lives depend upon being a part of what is circulating in the way of money in downtown.