THIS week, before I go into the main topic I had planned to write on, I want to touch upon the recent further troubles that have been plaguing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. 

From what I’ve read about the fairly complex set of technical and practical problems that have combined to undermine the rollout of Obamacare as promised by Obama, the key characteristic of the ones that most threaten his credibility have to do with the fact that it appears that some people responsible for the architecture of the Affordable Care Act simply did not cover all possible contingencies in the framing of the Act.
One example is the fact that while the AFA appears to have catered, through what Obama referred to as the Grandfather Clause, for Americans being able to keep their preexisting coverage as is if they wished – a key talking point and selling point for Obama while lobbying for support for the Act – it did not cater for the expiration and renewal of preexisting coverage, an omission which has effectively taken the choice of keeping their old coverage out of the hands of a significant number of Americans, since the AFA treats renewal as a completely new coverage. Someone, somewhere, in the creation of one of the most controversial and monumental pieces of legislation in American history, effectively dropped the ball, and the President was left to pick it up since it, after all, has his name on it.
Quite frankly, I don’t see this scenario playing out under Hilary Clinton. While I appreciate the historicity of Obama’s presidency as well as the tremendous work he has done under at times rabid oppositional pressure from the Republicans, in terms of pragmatic governance of the world’s most influential military, sociocultural and economic power, I would have gone for the former First Lady. My reasoning is simple – Hilary Clinton, (Senator Hilary Clinton before she ran in the Democratic primaries, lost to Obama, and was subsequently appointed his Secretary of State) would not only have had the political experience but also the ability to gather the right skills to her, people who not only had the ability to craft sound policy, but to help keep her public image together during the most acute of PR crises, as they did for her husband. The key problem with Obama, and one which has resurfaced in recent weeks, is that despite his great and inspirational public oratory, he does not appear to have the ability to inspire professional commitment and consensus, even in his own camp, something he will have to learn to do if he doesn’t want to see his legacy significantly tarnished during the remaining two years of his presidency.

As with Obama, the legacy of this current parliament is going to depend on the ability or lack thereof, to form meaningful consensus

And speaking of consensus building, I have to turn now to our own local situation in Parliament. When the recently parliamentary configuration was still fresh and new, I made the observation:
“I don’t want to go into the merits or demerits of the cases of either the government or the opposition here. What I will say that a dispensation in which the government imagines itself to be an unstoppable force, and the parliamentary majority imagines itself to be an immovable object is one that cannot work.”
In that article, I expressed the hope that the gridlock of parliament presented the opportunity for new and innovative ways of getting on with the business of government in the interest of the people. Two years later, the situation, if anything, has actually gotten worse.
I usually seek to go most safely in the middle when it comes to pronouncing upon pitched parliamentary battles – this is because we must concede that for the most part, those who serve in our parliament, no matter what side of the National Assembly they find themselves on, must be given the presumption of acting in the national interest.  What I cannot fathom however is, in the light of the dire national implications associated with failure to pass anti-money laundering legislation, why the insistence on what appears to be unreasonable horse-trading. Why link the Public Procurement Commission unflinchingly to the AML, considering both the real need for further consensus on the former and the critical urgency of the latter. It’s like saying to a man who needs a bicycle to cross a narrow bridge that you can only sell him the bicycle if he immediately buys the car he needs to cross another bridge a little further down the road.
When I first wrote about the issue of parliamentary gridlock, I expressed the hope that we were going to see a change in the way our politicians dealt with each other in our most important democratic mechanism and forum.  Although I’m a bit jaded, particularly over the developments in recent months, I want to close by repeating my hope that a mutually beneficial way forward can still be found.  As with Obama, the legacy of this current parliament is going to depend on the ability or lack thereof, to form meaningful consensus.

(By Keith Burrowes)