WalkerThe prestigious Gleaner Honour Award will be presented later this month. Today we continue to profile category winners. Director of Elections, Danville Walker, is the winner of the public service category.
Lynford Simpson, Staff Reporter
"I PROMISE myself one thing when I work in the public sector. I will not try and carry water in a basket. If you give me a basket to carry water I am going to give it back to you. And I think a lot of public sector employees need to adopt that approach."
Meet Danville Walker, the demanding, resolute and uncompromising Director of Elections who does not settle for second best.
He usually gets the results he wants and it is no accident that the October 16, 2002 general election, over which he presided as the elections boss, has been described as the cleanest in the country's history. Many, including foreigners, heaped praise on him for pulling off what the detractors said was not possible, an almost incident-free election.
Absent this time around were reports of widespread stuffing of ballot boxes, voter intimidation and names being left off the voters' list - characteristics that had dominated past elections.
Mr. Walker, a tough-talking director, had preached a consistent diet of "free and fair elections" leading up to the polls. He did not miss an opportunity to warn candidates that the election results would be voided if fraud or any type of malpractice was detected in any constituency.
The head of the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ), by his own admission, refuses to take on a task unless he is given the resources to get the job done. And he has demanded those resources since taking up his post in May 1997.
Just who is this guy?
Danville Walker has been a baker (having worked for four years in his father's bakery), bartender, accountant, teacher and consultant before taking on the difficult job of Director of Elections.
Mr. Walker, married with three children, was born in Jamaica and attended high school at Excelsior. His disciplined approach to getting things done could be linked to the fact that he was a cadet "from maybe the second day after I went there," he told The Sunday Gleaner.
He first visited the United States after fifth form in 1976, came back after one year and attended lower sixth form. After high school, Mr. Walker spent four years working in his father's bakery. He would then spend the next dozen years of his life living and working in the United States.
The EOJ boss was well prepared for his current job. He put himself through college by working as, among other things, a bartender. "Working as a bartender was great as it caused you to meet a lot of wonderful people," he said.
Having graduated from City University of New York where he did Public Accountancy, becoming a certified accountant, Mr. Walker went to work for Coopers and Lybrand. Thereafter he went into teaching when the state had a difficulty finding minority lecturers at the school of business. "After that I started my own business in New York, a tax practice and did fairly well," Mr. Walker said. He did consulting work until the time of his return to Jamaica in 1994.
The only boy of three children, Mr. Walker credited his late father as having the biggest influence on his life. His mother, who is still alive, has had a big impact as well. About his father, he said: "He was a disciplinarian but he was somebody I could always speak to. I don't remember him raising his hand to me after I was about 10 years old but I do remember him lecturing me for about two to three hours. It was very important to him, in his words, to raise me to be a man."
He took the job of Director, six months before the 1997 election conscious that it was a difficult undertaking and despite the fact that he was doing well in the United States. There was no voters' list and the previous Director, Major Winston Sutherland, had demitted office in a cloud of controversy. An election was a mere six months away and he was expected to work miracles.
Reminiscing, Mr. Walker said: "What I was earning in the United States was enough that most people would feel that you had a very good life in America and yet I wanted to come home. So I had come to the realisation that money alone couldn't make me happy. If so, then I would never have left the States. But as far as I'm concerned I only went away to study."
He accepted the EOJ job because he was looking for something challenging.
In any event, he was "always drawn to politics". He revealed that he would stay up late at nights following the U.S. Presidential elections. "I could almost list all 50 Governors and the 100 Senators and most congressmen," he stated proudly.
Perhaps because of the sensitive nature of the appointment, Mr. Walker disclosed that he had to undergo four or five sets of interviews before being appointed on May 26, 1997. A general election was held on December 18 that year. He was forced to get a voters' list ready through a massive voter enumeration exercise. He utilised a house-to-house and fixed centre method. Despite his best efforts, there were cries that the list was dirty and that names were left off.
He would dedicate the next four years to getting it right the next time and this he accomplished with flying colours. Among his aces this time around was the recruitment of 20,000 volunteers, dubbed election day workers who effectively replaced political activists. From all reports, the volunteers performed creditably.
Danville Walker is not intimidated by politicians or over-awed by their position. He merely sees them as "Jamaicans offering themselves for service". Said he: "They are ordinary people. They have the same problems you and I have. Their children give them trouble. They have mortgages they are trying to pay. They are trying to make ends meet like the rest of us."
Mr. Walker said he treats politicians and the most humble person with the same respect but warned that "I will be as harsh with both, if necessary."
He has grown in confidence in the job. This, because he has accomplished a major goal, making the EOJ ready for an election at all times. He explained that with four years to prepare for the recently held election, he had time to evaluate staff and make changes (many persons were fired), train staff and acquire the resources necessary to strengthen the institution.
But he refuses to take all credit for himself. He admitted that he has been blessed with two powerful teams at the Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC), the first headed by attorney-at-law William Chin-See and the current headed by Errol Miller, a university professor.
"So you are talking to people all the time who know what you are talking about and that's a step up but we still had to fight for those resources. We have been very clear about what can be achieved with those resources and what will not be achieved without them."
He views having the right staff in place as a big part of having adequate resources at your disposal. As such he is unflinching on performance, a major criterion of his. And he does not budge when politicians beg him to re-employ persons whose services were terminated for non-performance.
"If the people are not performing they must go," he declared, adding that "far too often politicians appoint people because they are comfortable with them from a political point of view, not because they are competent and we are the ones who pay the price for that."
On corruption, he argued that a far greater problem than corruption was incompetent managers. "We squander too many resources because we have feeble management, people who are afraid to lose their jobs, people who are afraid to make the necessary decisions."
His advice to public sector bosses: "Don't be so worried about how you get it done, just get the job done. You can always work on that afterwards but right now we need the successes, we need to get things done more so than we need to be safe in our little jobs. Additionally, we need to speak up as far too many quiet people are in the public sector of Jamaica."
Despite the kudos being heaped on him for a well-run election, Mr. Walker said there was tremendous room for improvement in the system. For the upcoming Local Government Election, emphasis will again be on training which gets under way this month. He has again warned candidates that their divisions will be voided if any malpractice is uncovered.
"The best advice I can give any candidate in any election going forward in Jamaica is learn how to get out your vote and put your machinery in place because the only people who are going to vote are the bona fide people," he said.
Mr. Walker's contract expires in May but he will use the Local Government Election as sort of a gauge to determine whether he will have it renewed. He is however open to other challenges.
"I'm hoping that when I leave the Electoral Office it doesn't really matter who the director is anymore because the systems that we have in place and the structure is of such that it will deliver what we need to deliver. Because it's an institution, it's not a patty shop. If it can't do that after I'm gone then I would consider it a personal failure."
