Gleaner Editorial Board Refuses To Be Guided By Facts .….

Τhe Editorial Board of the Gleaner com­pa­ny has every right to be crit­i­cal of whomev­er it choos­es to cri­tique and crit­i­cize. In fact Editorials are opin­ions, blogs, of the writer’s views and biases.
Editorials do not take away from the legit­i­ma­cy or the authen­tic­i­ty of the Publication.
For Years now the Editorial board of the Gleaner com­pa­ny has been stri­dent­ly a part of the pro­pa­gan­da arm of the People’s National Party. That too is okay, in fact I recall a time when the board was high­ly sup­port­ive of the Labor Party’s policies.
What I take issue with is the inabil­i­ty of the Gleaner’s Editorial writ­ers to tell the truth. When you dis­tort the truth you give up the right to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Of course that time may have already passed for the once high­ly respect­ed Gleaner Company.

Monday June 8^th 2015.…
THE JAMAICA Labour Party (JLP), we can con­firm, con­tin­ues to face a cri­sis of lead­er­ship. This is reflect­ed in the par­ty’s inabil­i­ty, or worse, unwill­ing­ness, to artic­u­late clear, coher­ent pol­i­cy options, or sen­si­bly cri­tique and debate those being pur­sued by the Government.
The lat­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of the par­ty’s lazi­ness, if not intel­lec­tu­al malaise, was last week’s state­ment by its gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Horace Chang, on the ongo­ing wage nego­ti­a­tions between pub­lic-sec­tor work­ers and their employ­er, the Government. It was dis­tin­guished by its trite­ness, which, unfor­tu­nate­ly, is too often the case with dec­la­ra­tions by shad­ow ministers.

Crisis of leadership?
What Country is this writer liv­ing in ? Even as I ask the ques­tion I know it is some­what sil­ly , con­sid­er­ing that we are now liv­ing in the Information age. Regardless of where one live, it is com­mon knowl­edge that Jamaica has a cri­sis of lead­er­ship, which has noth­ing to do with the oppo­si­tion party.
The Writer seem to be pro­ject­ing the very Achilles heel of the Governing PNP onto the JLP.
The pro­pa­gan­da piece went on to say .
The admin­is­tra­tion of which Mr Chang was a mem­ber in 2010 entered into an eco­nom­ic-sup­port agree­ment with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that quick­ly ran aground because of the Government’s unwill­ing­ness or inabil­i­ty to make some of the required hard choic­es. The new admin­is­tra­tion has been doing much bet­ter since 2012, includ­ing in meet­ing the IMF’s bench­mark pri­ma­ry bal­ance of 7.5 per cent of GDP, which has placed the debt on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry. An over­val­ued Jamaican dol­lar has been adjust­ing. The cur­rent account deficit has declined from above 12 per cent to sin­gle dig­it; infla­tion has mod­er­at­ed, com­ing close to that of major trad­ing part­ners; the coun­try’s glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness indices have improved.

No men­tion of the fact that when the Bruce Golding Administration took office it was left with zero option but to enter into an agree­ment with the IMF.
The nation was broke and in chaos after an unprece­dent­ed 14 ¹⁄₂ years of mis­man­age­ment and fis­cal sui­cide led by Omar Davies.
The writer spoke about the agree­ment quote : that quick­ly ran aground because of the Government’s unwill­ing­ness or inabil­i­ty to make some of the required hard choices.
Those hard choic­es of which the writer speaks is the then Government’s refusal to inflict the inevitable pain which would occur had it con­tin­ued adher­ing to the agreement.
Ironically the Simpson Miller Administration has no such reser­va­tion about the pain the peo­ple feel, as long as the IMF tar­gets are met.
In fact con­form­ing to and reach­ing set dead­lines have been bal­anced on the backs of ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple, who are forced to live with wage freeze, esca­lat­ing food and ser­vice charges and run-away inflation.

As an opin­ion writer I try my very best to state only facts, even as total objec­tiv­i­ty may be miss­ing from some of what I have to say. For that I am guilty , I too have my biases.
It is indeed disin­gen­u­ous for the writer to adopt a blink­ered posi­tion on the true facts by intimating.Quote:  But the Government was, in part, able to keep a lid on the fis­cal accounts by main­tain­ing a wage freeze, when the more sus­tain­able, but polit­i­cal­ly far more dif­fi­cult option would be to elim­i­nate around 15,000 pub­lic-sec­tor jobs. Indeed, Audley Shaw, the shad­ow finance min­is­ter, has now agreed that job cuts, done foren­si­cal­ly, are advisable.

Unleashing the full effects of adher­ence to IMF tar­gets onto ordi­nary Jamaicans was uncon­scionable, even as the Miller Administration kept pub­lic sec­tor work­ers con­fined to a wage freeze.
Of course a pub­lic sec­tor down­size is and must be a part of any seri­ous attempt at fix­ing Jamaica’s debt prob­lem. There are ways to accom­plish­ing that with­out arbi­trar­i­ly tak­ing a scalpel to the pub­lic sec­tor rolls.

This can be achieved if the Administration real­is­ti­cal­ly deci­dide to elim­i­nate the vast amount of polit­i­cal patron­age-hires it has engaged in.
The Administration can also cut employ­ees through attri­tion result­ing from retire­ment. Neither of these two options are par­tic­u­lar­ly painful to any­one except those who weren’t sup­posed to be on the pay­roll in the first place.
The Editorial board is doing a ter­ri­ble dis-ser­vice to the Jamaican peo­ple, many of whom still believe any­thing com­ing from the news­pa­per is Gospel.
This non­sense had noth­ing to do with Andrew Holness the JLP leader and the board knows it, how­ev­er they will not be guid­ed by truth in their quest to defame and slur.
Editorial: JLP’s Leadership Crisis