Old PNP, Same Old Promises, Lies And Cons…

They did it in the 70s, at the time the Island had only been a decade into it’s new­ly found inde­pen­dence .……[of sorts], crime was no wor­ry to any­one, the econ­o­my was buzzing from the tourism indus­try, a vibrant alu­minia export sec­tor, our agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor was the envy of the devel­op­ing world, man­u­fac­tur­ing was boom­ing and the gov­ern­ment of Hugh Lawson Shearer was only get­ting started.
Off and run­ning, build­ing schools, hos­pi­tals, and infra­struc­ture at a pace unri­valed to this day.
Yup, the term built by labor was on every­one’s lips.…..
Despite all of that progress and devel­op­ment, Micahel Manley, an intense­ly charis­mat­ic politi­cian with extra­or­di­nary ora­tor­i­cal skills told the nation (“bet­ta mus cum”).

Better must come was a bull­shit pipedream being sold to a pop­u­la­tion that was already intense­ly primed by the PNP to expect mate­r­i­al things they did not work to earn.
So the build­ing of new schools and the lay­ing of new infra­struc­ture, and the peace and tran­quil­i­ty in the coun­try which allowed for peo­ple to be edu­cat­ed, get good-pay­ing jobs, and live their best lives was no good.
What they want­ed was free hous­es, liv­ing on top of each oth­er, free elec­tric­i­ty, free water in the pipes, free mon­ey from jobs they nev­er did, and free stuff that is tak­en from peo­ple who had worked all of their lives and giv­en to them.
By 1972 Michael Manley had rid­den into pow­er on the idea that no one has to work for shit. He was the rod-wav­ing magi­cian [Jousha], who would deliv­er all of the free­bies and no one had to work for shit ever again.

By 1980, a mere eight years lat­er, the tourist had stopped com­ing, the entire man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor had migrat­ed to Trinidad, agri­cul­ture was a dis­tant dream, our once envi­able pri­vate sec­tor was dec­i­mat­ed, investors and busi­ness-peo­ple had all tak­en up res­i­dence in south Florida, hav­ing tak­en one of the five Air-Jamaica flights they were warned to take.…..Their prop­er­ty by then was tak­en over by hood­lums who had vot­ed dozens and hun­dreds of times in a sin­gle elec­tion, in order to receive the wind­fall of free­bies the wealthy and the not so wealthy had left behind.
In try­ing to san­i­tize their pathet­ic social­ist images, not just in Jamaica, but across the Caribbean, the faux Inteligencia indoc­tri­nat­ed at the com­mu­nist-lean­ing University of the West Indies, tied them­selves to free­dom fight­ers like Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Jonas Savimbi, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, and even Robert Mugabe, in order to claim legit­i­ma­cy in their com­mu­nist lean­ing failings.

They heap praise on Michael Manley and his Minions like DK Duncan, Trevor Monroe, Percival Patterson, Arnold Bertram and the oth­er losers who ran our coun­try into the ditch, not just between 1972 to 1980 but for an unprece­dent­ed ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years of abject fail­ure that has cost Jamaica incal­cu­la­ble trea­sure, par­tic­u­lar­ly her human brain-drain.
What the fraud­sters at the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to, those who left years ago, or even decades ago, will try to con­vince you of, is that Michael Manley’s raft of social ini­tia­tives was nec­es­sary, and as a con­se­quence, the dam­age and destruc­tion done to the econ­o­my were unavoidable.
I call bullshit.

Michael Manley was instru­men­tal in end­ing Jamaica’s bas­tardy laws. Michael Manley was instru­men­tal in pass­ing leg­is­la­tion that enabled women to go on mater­ni­ty leave with pay. He helped to estab­lish the National Housing Trust. Michael Manley is cred­it­ed with the rur­al elec­tri­fi­ca­tion pro­gram, he should not be cred­it­ed with that it was an idea whose time had come.
He is cred­it­ed with offer­ing free edu­ca­tion up to the ter­tiary lev­el. Politicians can give away what­ev­er they chose to in leg­is­la­tion designed to har­vest votes, how those pro­grams are paid for is anoth­er matter.
Land reform and equal pay for women are to Manleys credit.

None of those social pro­grams sin­gu­lar­ly, or col­lec­tive­ly, had to come at the expense of the Jamaican econ­o­my, the destruc­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, chas­ing away the pri­vate sec­tor, ruin­ing our cul­ture, and cre­at­ing one that depends on tak­ing from oth­ers, rather than peo­ple work­ing for what they want.
The resul­tant brain-drain from peo­ple tak­ing flight from Manley’s com­mu­nist over­tures, the destruc­tion of our nation­al air­line, the migra­tion of our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to Trinidad, the empow­er­ing of the island’s crim­i­nals, and the den­i­gra­tion of the rule of law in our coun­try, was way too much for our coun­try to bear.
Whatever vic­to­ry that may have been derived from the PNP’s tenure, (not just Michael Manley’s tenure) but the tenure of the PNP in the post-inde­pen­dence Jamaica has been a pyrrhic victory.

Yet here we are again, one would have thought that the PNP would have learned some­thing and come back to the table with a plan for Jamaica, one that is not based on the con­tin­u­a­tion of emp­ty promis­es of every­one hav­ing every­thing they want and need .…… all for free.
So here comes Damion Crawford promis­ing free­bies, more freebies,10,000 schol­ar­ships for $3.5 bil­lion. When asked where the fuck­ing mon­ey was com­ing from to pay for it, he remarked, allo­ca­tions will be made in the bud­get annu­al­ly to cov­er the cost”.

To those of you pay­ing atten­tion, that is not an answer, it is not like there are extra funds lying around that can be used for dis­cre­tionary spending.
Every fis­cal year gov­ern­ment is forced to scrape and scratch to meet bud­getary oblig­a­tions that already exist, that must be fund­ed, Health, Education, National Security, Agriculture, and the host of oth­er pub­lic sec­tor agen­cies that must be fund­ed. There is noth­ing else to tax, and there is no new man­u­fac­tur­ing, min­ing, or anoth­er sec­tor that will be pro­vid­ing a wind­fall from which the 3.5 bil­lion may be sourced.
At the same time, they are promis­ing to give every­one land, free hous­es, and every­thing else they need. You guessed it all for free.

Where will all that mon­ey come from to fund those promis­es? The stark real­i­ty is that they will not be fund­ed, because they will not materialize.
The PNP has always used promis­es to fool peo­ple into vot­ing for them. This time around, I hope that the Jamaican vot­ers will real­ize a con-game when they see it, and send them packing.
Send Peter Phillips and his band of thieves a strong mes­sage that peo­ple will no longer fall for promis­es when they can see real and tan­gi­ble results hap­pen­ing in front of their eyes every day.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
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