Queen Portia !

One can­not fix what one does not under­stand to be a prob­lem. Jamaica’s People’s National Party as a par­ty nev­er ful­ly under­stood the con­cept of free mar­ket . They built their par­ty on pop­ulism and the charis­ma of their leaders.

The prob­lem with the People’s National Party is not that they do not mean well, it’s not that they do not care, the prob­lem is the method­olo­gies they employ in their stat­ed quest to improve the lives of Jamaicans actu­al­ly has kept the poor­est peo­ple enslaved in their own pover­ty. I was not around at the time of Norman Manley , but my curios­i­ty about his­to­ry has revealed the true nature of Manley’s con­tri­bu­tion to Jamaica and the pop­ulism he used to deliv­er said ben­e­fits. Norman Manley’s pop­u­lar­i­ty and pop­ulism and that of his son Michael gave birth to an almost cult-like genre of the Jamaican pop­u­la­tion that per­sists to this day despite the PNP’s short-com­ings, and cor­rup­tion over the last three decades. One could rea­son­ably argue that the cult-like loy­al­ty the most­ly poor­er under­class have for the PNP , some­thing the Jamaica Labor Party can only dream of , is anchored large­ly in their inabil­i­ty to under­stand that real change in their lives will come only through hard-work, sac­ri­fice, and nation­al pride. National pride by the way does not mean wear­ing com­mu­nist red, salut­ing with clenched fist, or from those who run around call­ing each oth­er com­rade but has nev­er read a line of Lenin or Marx’s phi­los­o­phy. Today​.Today despite the fall of the Berlin Wall result­ing in the reuni­fi­ca­tion of an impov­er­ished com­mu­nist East Germany with a thriv­ing West Germany over two decades lat­er, the breakup of the for­mer Soviet empire, and the death of com­mu­nism as an organ of empow­er­ment, the PNP is still stuck advo­cat­ing the same regres­sive com­mu­nal poli­cies that caused those occur­rences in these larg­er geo­graph­ic loca­tions in the first place, poli­cies they have since dis­card­ed and are now rac­ing to catch up with the rest of the indus­tri­al­ized world which opt­ed for free mar­ket pol­i­cy, trust­ing in the inge­nu­ity of their peo­ple to dri­ve growth and devel­op­ment through their God-giv­en talents.

Miller

The People’s National Party President Portia Simpson Miller recent­ly chid­ed Prime Minister Andrew Holness for stat­ing that Government real­ly can­not be the prime cre­ator of jobs.This crit­i­cism ought to have been a warn­ing to an informed pop­u­lace that this per­son may mean well but lacks a basic under­stand­ing of what real­ly is required to change the dynam­ics in the coun­try , which will in turn affect their lives in a pos­i­tive way. Alas Jamaica does not have an informed pop­u­la­tion, what we have is a deeply dived peo­ple who bleed red/​orange or green when they are cut. Government’s job is to pro­vide a safe envi­ron­ment, that includes ade­quate infra­struc­ture which in turn gives peo­ple a chance to get the edu­ca­tion they need in the field of their choice to bet­ter their lives. How can gov­ern­ment which does earn rev­enue large­ly through tax­a­tion be the engine that dri­ves sus­tain­able job cre­ation or growth? Unfortunately the PNP is still enshrined in the socialist/​communist dog­ma that is embraced by only North Korea , even Cuba is look­ing to move to a mar­ket econ­o­my. Portia talks about China , brag­ging that the PNP embraced China when it was not pop­u­lar to do so , well the truth of the mat­ter is that the PNP did not embrace China for it’s now diver­si­fied cap­i­tal­ist eco­nom­ic push , they embraced China on ide­o­log­i­cal grounds . Holness missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dri­ve this fact home, chalk that up to his youth. In the 21^st cen­tu­ry the PNP is still refer­ring to them­selves as com­rades, that train has long left the sta­tion the only ones who has­n’t real­ized this is them.

As I have allud­ed to in these blogs time and again when asked what her pri­or­i­ty would be if elect­ed Prime Minister Miller stat­ed that she would endeav­or to col­lect man­goes that we can­not eat,process them,eat what we can and share the remain­der with the rest of the world . a sup­port­er of Miller famous­ly stat­ed in a blog that Miller is respect­ed and loved all around the world . I thought about that claim as I remind­ed myself that in the same way coun­tries do not share friend­ships they share com­mon inter­ests, women laud each oth­er com­pli­ment each other,celebrate each oth­er, praise each oth­er, claim to sup­port each oth­er for no oth­er rea­son but that they are women. On the world stage polit­i­cal lead­ers tol­er­ate each oth­er. In an appar­ent open mike foul up recent­ly at a gath­er­ing of world lead­ers, French President Nicholas Sarkozy report­ed­ly told President Obama he could­n’t stand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because he was a liar, to which Obama retort­ed “You can’t stand him , how do you think I feel hav­ing to deal with him every day”? I am sure both gen­tle­man warm­ly greet­ed and chat­ted with Mister Netanyahu ear­li­er that day.