Jamaicans Have A Final Chance To Do The Right Thing For Their Children Going Into The 21^st Century.…

All signs seem to point to National Elections being announced in Jamaica soon. The Island’s Prime Minister who said she was await­ing her Master’s touch to announce the date of the Elections, has since said that her mas­ter has already touched her. If one can set aside the third grade idio­cy of the notion that some­thing as crit­i­cal as Elections can be left up to a sim­ple-mind­ed per­son­’s whim, then we may progress to the con­se­quences of the next poll.

Several major indi­ca­tors have been point­ing to the immi­nence of National elec­tions the least of which is a sched­uled mass ral­ly for Half-Way-Tree Square this Sunday January 31^st. Probably more impor­tant than any­thing the Administration in Kingston says or does, are the com­ments com­ing from American Officials respond­ing to ques­tions from the Jamaican media at the US Embassy in Kingston.

We’re focused on co-oper­a­tion; so as long as we’re actu­al­ly con­tin­u­ing to co-oper­ate, we’ll work with any­body who’ll co-oper­ate with us,” said Juan Gonzalez, deputy assis­tant sec­re­tary for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the US State Department.
“We’re com­mit­ted to work­ing with who­ev­er is in pow­er after the next round of elec­tions,” said US Ambassador to Jamaica Luis Moreno.
The Americans most like­ly knew the Election date before the infan­tile head of the Jamaican Government did but that is anoth­er Article.

The more impor­tant issue for the Island going for­ward above all else, is whether the peo­ple are will­ing to con­tin­ue on a path of cor­rup­tion, lack of account­abil­i­ty, gross incom­pe­tence and mis­man­age­ment entrenched in the present People’s National Party (PNP) Administration.
Or change course for the mar­ket style poli­cies of the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) if that par­ty can unshack­le itself from the cling­ing residue of Elitism and arrogance.

The fact is that with new IMF dic­tates there will be lay­offs and much more of the bit­ter pills Jamaicans have been forced to swal­low for decades under PNP lead­er­ship. Massive deval­u­a­tion of the local cur­ren­cy will bring con­tin­ued and ever increas­ing pover­ty, forc­ing even more Jamaicans below the pover­ty line .
Crime will go up expo­nen­tial­ly because of the con­tin­ued dete­ri­o­rat­ing eco­nom­ic con­di­tions but also as a result of the Administration’s reluc­tance to sup­port robust law-enforce­ment and it’s con­tin­ued affil­i­a­tions with the crim­i­nal underworld.

Though dif­fi­cult and harm­ful a con­tin­ued rela­tion­ship with the IMF is to Jamaica, a new Labor Party Administration does not have the lux­u­ry of end­ing the rela­tion­ship with the fund with­out dis­as­trous con­se­quences. Jamaica’s over four Billion US Dollar debt to the fund and oth­er lend­ing Agencies does not leave a poten­tial labor par­ty admin­is­tra­tion much option.

So where do we go from here?
A JLP win would mean a con­tin­u­a­tion of the Island’s asso­ci­a­tion with the IMF. There will be lay­offs and pre­sum­ably addi­tion­al deval­u­a­tion of the cur­ren­cy. All of which will instant­ly be blamed on the JLP sup­posed incom­pe­tence. The truth is a PNP vic­to­ry will change none of these events either.

This is the rea­son the PNP will call elec­tions any day now.
They want this elec­tion behind them before these inevitable aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures begin to bite.

The dif­fer­ence in the approach­es between the JLP and PNP in this regard will be a PNP con­tin­u­a­tion of the IMF pro­gram with the , graft , cor­rup­tion, crime and oth­er vices and noth­ing out­side liv­ing hand to mouth as against tak­ing the med­i­cine with a clear plan toward an end-game which weans the Island off the IMF and places it on a path to prosperity.
That does not mean that the JLP does­n’t have it’s own Demons .
The Party will have to learn humil­i­ty. Many in Bustamante and Shearer’s Party are arro­gant and pow­er-hun­gry and should not have any say in state pow­er. Ultimately the peo­ple will have a choice to make this time stay with the sta­tus-quo or vote into pow­er the Opposition with it’s own vices.