Reality Versus Rhetoric:

The new gov­ern­ment of Jamaica missed a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty after its vic­to­ry at the polls on December 29^th 2011, to show the coun­try that it had reformed and that it now under­stands the glob­al eco­nom­ic con­di­tions fac­ing coun­tries that were tra­di­tion­al eco­nom­ic pow­er­hous­es like the United States and France, much less small depen­dent coun­tries like Jamaica.Portia could not resist the urge to reward the par­ty faith­ful, so she opt­ed to cre­ate a cab­i­net that was larg­er than the cab­i­net of her pre­de­ces­sor Bruce Golding , which she stri­dent­ly crit­i­cized as too large and exces­sive. What is it that makes her feel that it is quite ok for her to do the very thing she so vehe­ment­ly, and stri­dent­ly crit­i­cized when the shoe was on the oth­er foot one would ask? Well those who under­stand Jamaican pol­i­tics will tell you her par­ty is the par­ty which arro­gant­ly believes that they alone should gov­ern the coun­try, and as such has labeled our coun­try PNP coun­try. On that phi­los­o­phy they are much like the American Republican Party which demands that Democrats irre­spec­tive of their man­date giv­en them by the elec­torate, must acqui­esce to their every demand on pol­i­cy. To them elec­tions have no con­se­quence, such is the men­tal­i­ty of the Peoples National Party.

Swiss finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny UBS has recent­ly warned investors to stay away from Jamaica for now because of the change of Government and utter­ances made by the leadership,and as it relates to its rela­tion­ship with the International Monetary fund. The warn­ing cement­ed what is a well-known fact that this par­ty that has now formed the gov­ern­ment has always been hos­tile to for­eign invest­ments and that it refus­es to hon­or inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions entered into by its pre­de­ces­sors. In a syn­op­sis UBS said, “The debt tar­gets “will require sig­nif­i­cant and sus­tained fis­cal effort through tough tax increas­es, expen­di­ture con­trol, includ­ing unpop­u­lar cuts in pub­lic employ­ment, as well as divest­ing loss-mak­ing state companies,” .

It will be inter­est­ing to see how this state­ment and the agree­ment in place with the International Monetary Fund squares with the much vaunt­ed JEEP which Miller and her par­ty rode to vic­to­ry at the polls. The eco­nom­ic real­i­ties fac­ing the coun­try is the same as for most coun­tries in Europe and oth­er parts of the world , these real­i­ties require that gov­ern­ments take seri­ous hard looks at their economies and make tough nesc­ssary adjust­ments in order to main­tain some degree of sol­ven­cy. As unpalat­able as these deci­sions are they are nesces­sary and must be insti­tut­ed. Jamaica is a devel­op­ing coun­try still in the pro­cess­ing of estab­lish­ing a work­able tax­a­tion sys­tem, to date the coun­try still has a tax sys­tem that large­ly pres­sures Government work­ers with the bulk of small busi­ness peo­ple pay­ing no tax­es, or at worst cheats the sys­tem blind. My point of dis­agree­ment with UBS is with it’s con­clu­sion that tax increas­es must be part of the solu­tion. Tax increas­es will not solve the prob­lem what we need is a widen­ing of the tax net to bring into com­pli­ance all those who aren’t pay­ing their fair share. Taxing those who are already pay­ing at a higer rate will actu­al­ly con­strict the tax base and result in less tax­es collected.

Other coun­tries like Italy, Greece and Spain are also hav­ing seri­ous eco­nom­ic trou­bles which require some aus­ter­i­ty. Renowned Economist, New York Times Columnist and Princeton Professor Paul Krugman feels that gov­ern­ment have a role to play in inject­ing cap­i­tal into these trou­bled economies rather than adopt­ing belt-tight­en­ing mea­sures that even­tu­al­ly shrinks economies and in his view makes the prob­lem worse.

Bruce Golding Simpson Miller

As was to be expect­ed the Government of Portia Simpson Miller did not learn any­thing beyond a craven and rapa­cious desire for pow­er. Once again the Intellectual Elites and oth­er parts of civ­il soci­ety to include the cler­gy, bar asso­ci­a­tion, media and oth­er groups are gid­dy with excite­ment at the ascen­sion of Miller to the Prime Minister’s perch for a sec­ond time in less than five years. Many are ecsta­t­ic that she has once again tak­en the reins of pow­er, assail­ing any­one who dare sug­gest she is unqual­i­fied for the job, their most read­i­ly avail­able label for dis­senters are sex­ist, and elit­ist. The truth is, Jamaica may very well not be the most sophis­ti­cat­ed coun­try to gov­ern, but irre­spec­tive of the lack of sophis­ti­ca­tion in a coun­try that size, she still is func­tion­al­ly inca­pable of mak­ing the best deci­sions that would give the coun­try max­i­mum chance in any giv­en sit­u­a­tion. Those who wor­ship at the altar of “SisterP” as she is called, have a legit­i­mate argu­ment to make when they cel­e­brate her for climb­ing from the bot­tom of the work­ing class, to the high­est elect­ed office in the land, that is no easy feat in Jamaica, a coun­try still steeped in post colo­nial caste demar­ca­tions. Noble though those argu­ments are they are not qual­i­fi­ca­tions for astute lead­er­ship at that level.

Our coun­try can ill afford to waste anoth­er 18 ¹⁄₂ years while the rest of the world march­es sted­fast­ly into first world sta­tus while we con­tin­ue with failed poli­cies of social exper­i­men­ta­tion. Miller though hav­ing won 42 seats to the LaborParty’s 21 must be very care­ful not to inter­pret her man­date as carte blanche to dis­re­spect the very peo­ple who put her in pow­er, as she clear­ly did with that in your face extra large exec­u­tive. She would be well advised that only forty eight per­cent of the elec­torate even both­ered to turn up at the polls , so the peo­ple who both­ered were those who were solid­ly in her cor­ner to begin with. Voter apa­thy this cycle stemmed large­ly from their dis­af­fec­tion with the actions of Golding who did sig­nif­i­cant harm to the par­ty of Bustamante .

See the achieve­ments of the Jamaica Labor Party at link pro­vid­ed below.

http://​www​.jamaical​abour​par​ty​.com/​b​a​se/

Sir Alexander Bustamante Edward Seaga

In order to take advan­tage of any sit­u­a­tion one must first under­stand that sit­u­a­tion, she hasn’t always demon­strat­ed that she under­stands the issues. After a tumul­tuous two terms in pow­er begin­ning in 1972 and cul­mi­nat­ing in 1980 Michael Manley was uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly kicked out of office, for what every­one but the cultist that sup­port that par­ty will tell you was gross in mis­un­der­stand­ing of world affairs. Manley after his lop­sided 51 to 9 seat defeat refused to con­test the snap elec­tions the Labor par­ty of Edward Seaga called toward the end of 1983. This unprece­dent­ed move gave the labor par­ty con­trol of all seats in the Parliament, Seaga was forced to appoint 8 Independent Senators to form an oppo­si­tion of sorts because of the pos­ture of the enti­tled PNP led by Michael Manley, whose response was to label the gov­ern­ment “ bogus”

Norman Manley Michael Manley

Manley for the most part between 1983 and 1989 trav­elled and did speak­ing engage­ments in the United States and Britain. He returned to con­test the Elections of 1989 and was prompt­ly returned to Office after soft­en­ing his social­ist rhetoric. Manley’s win in 1989 was the begin­ning of an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ year unbro­ken hold on pow­er that saw him step­ping away and hand­ing the reins to his deputy Percival James Patterson because of ill-health.

• That 18 ½ year PNP run saw crime esca­lat­ing to a stag­ger­ing pro­por­tions, each year seem­ing worse than the one before record­ing an aver­age 1600 mur­ders annu­al­ly. This does not mean that Manley did not have an impres­sive pro­gres­sive agen­da of accomplishments.
• The low­er­ing of the min­i­mum vot­ing age to 18 years.
• The intro­duc­tion of equal pay for women.^[3]
• The intro­duc­tion of mater­ni­ty leave.^[3]
• The out­law­ing of the stig­ma of ille­git­i­ma­cy.^[3]
• The abo­li­tion of Masters and Servants Act.^[3]
• A Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act which pro­vid­ed work­ers and their trade unions with enhanced rights.^[3]
• The estab­lish­ment of the National Housing Trust, which pro­vid­ed “the means for most employed peo­ple to own their own homes,” and great­ly stim­u­lat­ed hous­ing con­struc­tion, with more than 40,000 hous­es built between 1974 and 1980.^[3]
• The intro­duc­tion of free edu­ca­tion at pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary, and ter­tiary lev­els.^[4]
• The intro­duc­tion of sub­sidised meals, trans­porta­tion and uni­forms for school­child­ren from dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds.^[4]
• The intro­duc­tion of spe­cial employ­ment pro­grammes.^[5]
• The intro­duc­tion of pro­grammes designed to com­bat illit­er­a­cy.^[5]
• Increases in pen­sions and poor relief.^[6]
• The intro­duc­tion of a work­er’s par­tic­i­pa­tion pro­gramme.^[7]
• The pas­sage of a new men­tal health law.^[8]
• The intro­duc­tion of the fam­i­ly court.^[8]
• An increase in youth train­ing.^[8]
• A reform of local gov­ern­ment tax­a­tion.^[8]
• An upgrad­ing of hos­pi­tals.^[9]
• The intro­duc­tion of free health care for all Jamaicans.^[9]
• The estab­lish­ment of health clin­ics and a para­med­ical sys­tem in rur­al areas.^[9]
• The estab­lish­ment of var­i­ous clin­ics to facil­i­tate access to med­ical drugs.^[9]
• A sig­nif­i­cant increase in spend­ing on edu­ca­tion.^[9]
• An increase in the num­ber of doc­tors and den­tists in the coun­try.^[9]
• An expan­sion of day care cen­tres.^[9]
• The intro­duc­tion of Project Lend Lease, an agri­cul­tur­al pro­gramme designed to pro­vide rur­al labour­ers and small hold­ers with more land through ten­an­cy.^[7]
• The intro­duc­tion of a National Youth Service Programme for high school grad­u­ates to teach in schools, voca­tion­al train­ing, and the lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme.^[7]
• The intro­duc­tion of com­pre­hen­sive rent and price con­trols.^[7]
• The intro­duc­tion of sub­si­dies on basic food items (1973).^[7]
• The intro­duc­tion of pro­tec­tion for work­ers against unfair dis­missal.^[7]
• ^{List tak­en from Wikipedia}

^{These are difficult times , excesses, waste, and pay for play can no longer be the order of the day, politicians cannot fatten themselves at the expense of taxpayers while further condemning generations yet unborn to a life of poverty. I urge this Administration to empower the Office of Contractor General in the interest of the Jamaica people. I will not hold my breath however for this administration to do anything but fatten itself and it’s friends as it has always done with a spirt of entitlement.}