PNP JEEP

 As some­one who sup­port nei­ther of the two gangs that pass for gen­uine polit­i­cal par­ties in Jamaica. I am nonethe­less left shak­ing my head, won­der­ing just how stu­pid Portia Simpson Miller and her par­ty think Jamaicans are ? We will attempt to answer that ques­tion through out this post , mak­ing all attempts to be fair and objec­tive to Miller, based on her record and that of her par­ty. The People’s National Party (PNP) won the pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test decades ago over their rivals the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP),As a result they arro­gant­ly claim Jamaica is PNP coun­try. arro­gant though that claim is, there is s sig­nif­i­cant amount of truth to it. As a boy my dear grand­dad who did dou­ble duties as my dad, told me numer­ous times that Bustamante said his cousin Norman Manley was like a snake and he did not trust him as far as he could throw him. Both my grand­dad and his broth­er my great Uncle told these sto­ries, my youngest broth­er brings our great-uncle back to life with par­o­dy when he relives those sto­ries. Busta obvi­ous­ly had lit­tle trust for his cousin Norman Manley.

One can rea­son­ably argue that maybe Busta’s dis­trust was para­noia, after all Busta was not the glib artic­u­late British edu­cat­ed Queens coun­cil Barrister his cousin Norman was. Jokes abound, (gen­er­al­ly in the cir­cles of PNP par­ti­sans), about Busta’s lack of intel­lect, Busta hav­ing honed his skills in the rough and tum­ble world of the trade union move­ment in its ear­ly days. Busta is not absolved from the stain of pop­ulism and charis­ma, his cousin was just bet­ter at it . Having been born Alexander Clarke to an Irish planter Robert Clarke and a Jamaican woman Mary Clarke Bustamante report­ed­ly changed his name to Bustamante the name of a Spanish sea-cap­tain whom it is report­ed adopt­ed him. Busta report­ed­ly spent some of his ear­ly years in Spain where he was edu­cat­ed and lat­er joined the Spanish Army. He then went to Cuba and New York after which he returned to Jamaica in ‚1932 he dab­bled in a pri­vate busi­ness he found­ed which spe­cial­ized in lend­ing mon­ey, but poor work­ing con­di­tions , low wages , pover­ty and oth­er social ills cat­a­pult­ed him into writ­ing let­ters, orga­niz­ing protest action, giv­ing speech­es and medi­at­ing on behalf of work­ers. His advo­ca­cy took him all over the Caribbean where he advo­cat­ed on behalf of work­ers, In 1938 the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union was born. I detail these facts to show that on the ques­tion of pop­ulism Bustamante could mix it up with the best of them. The People’s National Party fig­ured out how to win elec­tions, like the JLP they claimed a man­date to defend the rights of the poor, they fig­ured if the poor­er class of peo­ple believe they are on their side they will most like­ly have more peo­ple sup­port­ing them, they have played that card per­fect­ly, they have won more elec­tions since Independence that the JLP has.

Many who sup­port the PNP sim­ply do not under­stand that Government can­not be looked at as a means to bet­ter their lives. Government can be a vehi­cle to effect change , by the laws it enacts, the imped­i­ments to growth it removes , and poli­cies it fol­lows, that are friend­ly to invest­ment. Government how­ev­er can­not be the employ­er of labor in a mean­ing­ful way that is sus­tain­able, Governments take in tax­es from tax­pay­ers , it hires and pays work­ers from those tax­es, it pro­vides ser­vices like police , fire, and pays teach­ers , there can only be real employ­ment and greater pros­per­i­ty when the foun­da­tions are laid that are friend­ly to busi­ness allow­ing them to invest , hire work­ers , and pay takes , that is the way to eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, not from Government hand-outs through pork bar­rel, or crim­i­nal shov­el­ing of cash to sup­port­ers, those are exact­ly how to dri­ve a coun­try into pover­ty ‚and failed state sta­tus. The PNP has suc­cess­ful­ly done that after ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years in office . I am left pow­er­less, just shak­ing my head that this par­ty which has lit­er­al­ly brought this coun­try to ruina­tion, with uncon­trolled crime , pover­ty, and cor­rup­tion could even be con­sid­ered as a cred­i­ble alter­na­tive to the JLP after less that one term in Office. The JLP has done sig­nif­i­cant harm to the coun­try in it’ han­dling of the Christopher Coke mat­ter, what was revealed to the world is what Jamaicans had already known, that both polit­i­cal par­ties are real­ly just crim­i­nal gangs, just gangs oper­at­ing with dif­fer­ent lay­ers and respon­si­bil­i­ties. The PNP could have done the patri­ot­ic thing and not con­test the next elec­tion. They could use the time to retool the par­ty, get rid of the old bag­gage , Portia, Omar Davies, Nicholson,Knight, Pickersgil, Buntin, etal. Michael Manley did not con­test the gen­er­al elec­tion of 1983, Edward Seaga called that snap elec­tion at a time when he thought he could win , Reagan had just invad­ed Grenada and Seaga had sent Jamaican sol­diers as part of the occu­py­ing force. Manley was caught flat-foot­ed and chose not to con­test the elec­tions, choos­ing instead to run around the world giv­ing speech­es and telling Jamaicans that the Government was ille­git­i­mate. Of course Manley knew he had no legs to stand on , any prime Minister can call elec­tions when­ev­er he choos­es under Jamaican law. Manley chose not to con­test because he felt he would lose, plain and sim­ple. Arguing then that the snap elec­tions were fraud­u­lent, is tan­ta­mount to a box­er get­ting knocked out after fail­ing to pro­tect him­self, then blames his oppo­nent. Portia Simpson Miller and her par­ty have now come up with anoth­er acronym [JEEP] Jamaica Emergency Employment Program.

Portia Simpson Miller

As if we have not had our fill of PNP acronyms, and slo­gans they have now devel­oped this new JEEP. There are how­ev­er a few parts miss­ing from this JEEP. Where are we going to get the mon­ey to fuel this jeep? any­one can make promis­es, Portia knows that there is noth­ing in this JEEP pro­gram that is paid for , If they are to be insti­tut­ed then there would have to be mas­sive tax increas­es or bor­row­ing. There is absolute­ly no way we can enact a social­ist pro­gram that puts peo­ple to work unfund­ed. The peo­ple’s National Party has learned noth­ing from events shap­ing the world over the last two decades. Globalization is the way for­ward, some refer to this new phe­nom­e­non as the new world order. It has at its core seri­ous impli­ca­tions for small nations like Jamaica, small­er nations will have to fig­ure out on whose side they are on and stick to that group. In order to com­pete in the areas of trade, receive con­ces­sions on fuel prices, and oth­er areas of the econ­o­my, small­er nation must be part of a group to real­ize those con­ces­sions and receive those con­sid­er­a­tions. CARICOM by the way is a far cry from being that group, with some mem­bers of CARICOM look­ing out exclu­sive­ly for their indi­vid­ual inter­est. European nations have come togeth­er as the European Union, a counter bal­ance to what they per­ceive to be hege­mo­ny on the part of the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Africans are talk­ing about an African Union or some sort of United States of Africa, of course they can’t even agree to dis­agree. South American nations like Brazil are emerg­ing as dom­i­nant forces on the world stage through pro­duc­tion and their com­mit­ment to using alter­na­tive ener­gy sources like ethanol , leav­ing more mon­ey in their cof­fers to grow their economies. Asia has come of age , China in the lead is ben­e­fit­ing from glob­al­iza­tion , build­ing their econ­o­my on mas­sive pro­duc­tion of cheap and inex­pen­sive goods , manip­u­lat­ing their cur­ren­cy , as well as intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty pira­cy. Other Asian nations like Indonesia, India, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and even Vietnam are emerg­ing as eco­nom­ic pow­er­hous­es as a result of coöper­a­tion , ben­e­fit­ing from out­sourced man­u­fac­tur­ing by large coun­tries like the United States. These coun­tries have seen their economies take on new life as they attract man­u­fac­tur­ing through cheap labor and less gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy. Most impor­tant­ly , at a time when all nations with the excep­tion of stub­born auto­crat­ic few like Cuba, and North Korea, are mov­ing their economies toward free mar­ket and open trad­ing, the PNP is propos­ing a raft of failed Socialist enti­tle­ments. The for­mer bas­tions of Communism/​Socialism China and Russia have now rec­og­nized that the only way to remain rel­e­vant is by open­ing their economies to the pri­vate sec­tor allow­ing for inter­na­tion­al trade and coöper­a­tion, it was what made America great, they made things and sold what they made . Jamaica should now be look­ing to fol­low suit with­out sell­ing off the coun­try to China or any oth­er large Nation with mon­ey. Our posi­tion ought to be, we have labor we are pre­pared to remove bar­ri­ers to invest­ment and trade. We must low­er crime which will see an enor­mous influx of new entrapenurialship,essentially more play­ers will want to come to the table. Instead the People’s National Party is propos­ing to take the coun­try back four decades to the sev­en­ties, with a raft of unfund­ed enti­tle­ment pro­grams that look good to poor peo­ple get­ting a lit­tle mon­ey for doing noth­ing, but it will cer­tain­ly be the death knell of the econ­o­my this time . When you hand out money(paper) that you haven’t earned , you sim­ply print it , it dri­ves up infla­tion, cheap­ens the cur­ren­cy and forces busi­ness­es to fail. One would have thought that by now the pro­po­nents of these pro­grams would rec­og­nize that the way to pros­per­i­ty is not through social­ism, but through edu­ca­tion hard work and inge­nu­ity. It is time for this par­ty of Norman Manley and his son Michael Manley to stop with the (sam­fy) and tell poor work­ing class Jamaicans there are no quick fix­es to their prob­lems, edu­cat­ing them that the only true path is through edu­ca­tion and hard work. That is the decent thing to do, the patri­ot­ic thing to do, fail­ing which we will con­tin­ue to lose gen­er­a­tions after gen­er­a­tions to pover­ty crime and despair. Now is the time Portia, you say you love the poor !If you love the poor now is the time to use your influ­ence to edu­cate them, I know it’s not pop­u­lar to do, I know it’ not in your DNA, but if you want to leave a lega­cy of car­ing, and con­cern for the peo­ple you say you love, use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell poor une­d­u­cat­ed Jamaicans that you will not be giv­ing them any more cur­ry goat and rice to secure their votes, tell them you want them to under­stand that they will have to help in nation build­ing, by start­ing now , right here , at this time, in this place. What Simpson Miller should be propos­ing at this junc­ture in the inter­est of our coun­try is a sim­ple plan that offers sus­tain­able jobs, here’s how. Miller would first have to have an under­stand­ing of the debil­i­tat­ing effect crime has on soci­ety, she would have to have a desire and or the will to give law enforce­ment what they need to do their jobs. Will and desire that are nec­es­sary com­po­nents that would enable the coun­try to offer poten­tial investors an envi­ron­ment not steeped in crimes to include extor­tion. Portia has none of those under­stand­ings, in inter­view after inter­view she has demon­stra­bly shown that she does not have a full grasp of the issues , or even under­stand the process nec­es­sary to grow our econ­o­my. The fact that the very vehi­cle she choses to push on the Jamaican peo­ple, the social­ist JEEP was designed by peo­ple oth­er than her or oth­er senior oper­a­tives in the par­ty , sug­gest that this is noth­ing based on core beliefs, but a cam­paign slo­gan designed sole­ly to win office. Here’s an idea, at a time when the world econ­o­my is reor­ga­niz­ing , old norms are out the win­dow, and new real­i­ties have to be embraced Jamaica needs to look to the future to see how we can lim­it the amount of scarce dol­lars we pay out for oil. This is the time for both the Governing par­ty and the Opposition to come togeth­er in the inter­est of the coun­try and see how we can encour­age a mas­sive invest­ment in solar, and wind ener­gy, there is no short­age of either of those two types of ener­gy. Investing in them at this time cre­ates jobs , reduces our car­bon foot­print and ben­e­fits our econ­o­my going for­ward. I would be hap­py to sup­ply a writ­ten plan on how this can be achieved to the Government and the leader of the oppo­si­tion, if they are will­ing to work togeth­er for the ben­e­fit of our coun­try. As Golding found out from the world’s eco­nom­ic down-turn mak­ing promis­es does noth­ing to improve the lives of Jamaicans, we are now liv­ing in an inter­con­nect­ed world where the cough of one coun­try insti­gates the snif­fle of anoth­er . Serious politi­cians must now stop with cheap pos­tur­ing and tell the mass­es of the peo­ple there are no quick fix­es to the coun­try’s fis­cal prob­lems. We are a small coun­try our prob­lems are not insur­mount­able, if we fix our crime prob­lem, fix our bureau­crat­ic prob­lems, we have a chance of once again attract­ing invest­ments into our coun­try. Portia and the PNP does not under­stand this . Bruce Golding the present Prime Minister under­stands this , but was unable to extri­cate him­self from the crim­i­nal ten­ta­cles of Christopher Coke and his Tivoli Empire, he will go down in infamy as the lit­tle train that couldn’t.