THE PEOPLE’S NATIONAL PARTY:

Since the launch of this site we have been crit­i­cal of Jamaica’s People’s National par­ty on sev­er­al occa­sions , in fact we have writ­ten three spe­cif­ic blogs that specif­i­cal­ly tar­gets that par­ty and its oper­a­tives. These blogs are as follows.

(1) Enough with the sup­port for crim­i­nals .July 27^th.

(2) We are not act­ing irre­spon­si­bly says PNP . August 5^th.

(3) No slo­ga­neer­ing except this new slo­gan .August 8^th.

We have been harsh­ly crit­i­cal of the PNP in these blogs as well as in oth­ers , not because we hate the peo­ple’s National Party as a par­ty com­pet­ing for state pow­er, and one that has been incred­i­bly suc­cess­ful at doing so .

We crit­i­cize the PNP because that par­ty has been giv­en tremen­dous lever­age at state pow­er , yet as very lit­tle to show for all of the time they were allowed con­trol of the state’s resources. In fact they have woe­ful­ly squan­dered the resources of the State , this crit­i­cism has come even from with­in . Dr Blythe a for­mer min­is­ter of Government and a very well-respect­ed Jamaican, him­self point­ed to the par­ty’s failings.

Many peo­ple bare­ly able to write their names, have become filthy rich , at the expense of the Jamaican tax­pay­ers, as a result of the PNP’s largess. They have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly used every cor­rupt prac­tice to award con­tracts to peo­ple not qual­i­fied to shine shoes. This has cost the Jamaican peo­ple Billions of dol­lars. Nepotism, cur­ry favor, polit­i­cal pay-offs and every vice imaginable,has been employed in swin­dling the scarce resources of the state and divert­ing them into the pock­ets of unscrupu­lous par­ty hacks and enforcers. Yet despite this, Jamaican vot­ers have over­whelm­ing­ly giv­en that par­ty the reins to gov­er­nance sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than the oth­er par­ty , the JLP.

The coun­try has strug­gled and now lags behind the rest of the Caribbean in pret­ty much all sec­tors to include edu­ca­tion , eco­nom­ic growth, and crime man­age­ment to name a few. Jamaica, which up to the begin­ning of the 70′ was the leader in the Caribbean, was looked to for lead­er­ship by its neigh­bors , has now been reduced to a laugh­ing-stock by coun­tries like Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Cayman Islands and oth­ers. Our cur­ren­cy is almost worth­less and our peo­ple looked on as pari­ahs wher­ev­er we go.

The PNP has tra­di­tion­al­ly posi­tioned itself as a cham­pi­on of the poor . Articulating a path that at face val­ue seem to advo­cate for the poor illit­er­ate mass­es, cham­pi­oning their cause as the cause of the par­ty, rather than actu­al­ly doing any­thing sub­stan­tive about their plight.

This par­ty has been blessed with great ora­tors at it’s helm, from the Manley’s, father and son to, Portia Simpson Miller , the first female to ascend to that lev­el in either par­ty, they have had tremen­dous crowd pleasers, who could/​can mes­mer­ize a crowd into believ­ing any­thing . However when the façade is peeled back there is, and nev­er real­ly was any­thing to the rhetoric.

Unfortunately for Jamaica ‚a coun­try with a large part of its pop­u­la­tion illit­er­ate, and too many look­ing to politi­cians for a break ‚the future seem bleak.

The hot air the PNP spew is wel­come news and some­thing to hold onto for many, but gen­er­al­ly is a lot of heat and not much light. The present leader of the par­ty Simpson Miller is seen as a kind of local deity , she has clawed her way up from the bot­tom of the pole of rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics , most peo­ple iden­ti­fy with her, they see her as one of them based on her hum­ble begin­nings, oth­ers are drawn to her because of her gen­der, they see her as a trail-blaz­er . Getting to the top of the heap is com­mend­able and wor­thy of recog­ni­tion. However there are those who could tell tales of some of her shenani­gans that would turn a lot of folks com­plete­ly off.

When viewed in the con­text of the length of time she has rep­re­sent­ed the con­stituen­cy of South west St Andrew, and her sup­posed pas­sion for the poor, the two nar­ra­tives shows a seis­mic dis­con­nect. The peo­ple of that con­stituen­cy are some of Jamaica’s most dis­ad­van­taged , needy, dis­pos­sessed, impov­er­ished, and illit­er­ate. There is no intent here to dis­par­age the good peo­ple of south-west St Andrew.

We bring these facts to the fore to illus­trate that sup­posed car­ing, does not nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late into pos­i­tive change. Saying I care , , hug­ging and cry­ing, with­out actu­al­ly lay­ing the foun­da­tion that will sus­tain a long-term growth process for gen­er­a­tions to come , real­ly is disin­gen­u­ous, and cre­ates more hurt than help. Teaching some­one to fish, is a much bet­ter strat­e­gy than giv­ing a per­son a fish every day. Unless of course, giv­ing a fish a day is a strat­e­gy designed to keep peo­ple behold­en to the giv­er , mes­mer­ized at the largess, and per­ceived kind­ness , but in a sin­is­ter way traps them into a cul­ture of depen­dence, and illiteracy.

The road to suc­cess was nev­er going to be an easy one ‚those in lead­er­ship , whether in busi­ness, pol­i­tics, war, what­ev­er the field , must edu­cate those they pur­port to lead on the sac­ri­fices and chal­lenges, as well as the set­backs that will lit­ter the road to suc­cess. Some argue suc­cess is not even attain­able. That aside, I liken suc­cess to a high-rise tow­er . Before we get to the exquis­ite panoram­ic view from those air-con­di­tioned offices, some­one had to dig sev­er­al floors down into the dirt and mud to lay the foun­da­tion , get­ting dirty, with hands bruised and cal­loused from the grind of secur­ing the foun­da­tions that makes it nec­es­sary to have that high-rise office tow­er. This anal­o­gy is alien to the strat­e­gy of the PNP , they stead­fast­ly refuse to acknowl­edge the grunge work that must be done to attain the fleet­ing con­cept that is suc­cess. Each and every Generation must do it’s part to add to the suc­cess­es of gen­er­a­tions past as we move to suc­cess, a con­cept that con­stant­ly moves the goal post. Despite this each gen­er­a­tion will see their stan­dard of liv­ing improved if we under­stand and imple­ment the nec­es­sary foun­da­tion work toward that end. In the blog titled No slo­ga­neer­ing except this new slo­gan, I point­ed to the fact that the pres­i­dent of the PNP when asked point­ed­ly what was the pri­or­i­ty for her ‚should she become the Prime Minister again. In the Interview giv­en to TVJ she gave an inco­her­ent tor­tured ram­ble that seemed like a toy train going round and round with no des­ti­na­tion. In that inter­view she failed to iden­ti­fy the sin­gle great­est threat to growth and progress, the crime mon­ster and ener­gy cost. As I com­ment­ed then, if Portia Simpson Miller is unable to under­stand that every­thing is pred­i­cat­ed on a sta­ble soci­ety where entre­pre­neurs can be the best they can be , cre­at­ing jobs . In a soci­ety free from crime and ter­ror , extor­tion, exor­bi­tant ener­gy rates, stu­pid regres­sive Government reg­u­la­tions based on the whims of one per­son, and a work-force that feels some­one owes it something.

This brings us to the lat­est fluff put for­ward by the PNP called the “PROGRESSIVE AGENDA”. For the sake of our coun­try I prayed that this lat­est fish­ing expe­di­tion would be dif­fer­ent from all of the oth­er fluff agen­das we have seen of the PNP in the past. Well true to form they con­tin­ued to offer a Utopian wide-rang­ing dis­or­ga­nized kitchen sink , rather than spe­cif­ic tar­get­ed areas for sus­tained atten­tion and growth.

The Progressive Agenda fea­tures five pil­lars: Human Resource Development; A Safe, Secure and Just Society; a Participatory, Accountable and Responsible Society; Progressive Internationalism; and Economic Growth and Sustainable Development. These pil­lars are cer­tain­ly crit­i­cal to the social and eco­nom­ic pro­gres­sion of Jamaica. Unfortunately, the PNP’s Progressive Agenda fails to lucid­ly demon­strate how the par­ty intends to achieve its in-explic­it dec­la­ra­tions. Under the Human Resources Development pil­lar, the par­ty notes that it will “address the under achieve­ment of young men, and the under-reward­ing of young women”. Under Safety and Security, the PNP express­es its inten­tion to “pro­mote a cul­ture of tol­er­ance, respect, social respon­si­bil­i­ty, respect for oth­er peo­ple, for ani­mals, and for nature”. They declare: “Jamaica will be a busy bee­hive.” They might as well state an inten­tion to sum­mon great God from the sky to “take away every­thing and make every­body feel high.

When pushed by TVJ on what would be her imme­di­ate focus if she was to be returned to pow­er, Miller had this to say.

I have sev­er­al pri­or­i­ties and hence the pro­gres­sive agen­da, that lays down the var­i­ous areas of concentration,certainly the growth and devel­op­ment of the country,economic growth and development,education , jobs. 

But those are kin­da broad, but what would you do to fix what you under­stand is a bro­ken economy.?(interviewer)

There are a num­ber of areas that we … we can look on that will be able to cre­ate jobs , we look at what you men­tioned ear­li­er agri­cul­ture and the val­ue added, you notice every year it’s now man­go time, we eat what we can and the rest just fall on the ground and rot, .veg­eta­bles now when you see the farm­ers loos­ing their crops because they have no market,how is it we can get fac­to­ries into a num­ber of the parish­es, that will process all of these things , and so that we can con­sume what we can and then oth­ers the rest of the world will share with us ‚and I think agri­cul­ture is one in terms of agri­cul­ture and the val­ue added.And I think urban and rur­al devel­op­ment will also be a focus apart from look­ing at the whole ques­tion of ener­gy , because I think that is crit­i­cal in the coun­try at this time, and look­ing at all the oth­er areas cer­tain­ly busi­ness­es, aahm small medi­um size , while not ignor­ing the big busi­ness­es, and con­tin­ue to give them sup­port, well we need to look at all those areas that will allow the econ­o­my to grow. We need to look seri­ous­ly at the devel­op­ment and planned devel­op­ment of Jamaica , both rur­al and urban, we tend to look at the towns and the cities and we ignore the rur­al areas,and the deep rur­al areas , and I think that’s why we have the migra­tion into ….so there are a num­ber of areas that are well doc­u­ment­ed in the pro­gres­sive agen­da , and there are a num­ber of per­sons that are look­ing at it and they are giv­ing us some crit­i­cal feed­back and sug­ges­tions that we are tak­ing on board so we can have the launch, and then to have wider con­sul­ta­tions , broad­er con­sul­ta­tions , and all of that.

Mangoes ! Yes my fel­low Jamaicans mangoes.