Return Of The Welfare State!

Thursday the 29^th of December was my birth­day. I told my wife I did not need a birth­day present, I am a sim­ple man who real­ly requires very lit­tle to make me hap­py. So as usu­al I went to work as I always did, some­thing I absolute­ly love to do, par­tic­u­lar­ly work­ing for myself at my very own busi­ness. I was blown away that my 18-year-old son a fresh­man in col­lege who just recent­ly start­ed work­ing in retail part time told me excit­ed­ly on the phone “dad don’t eat any­thing today I’m tak­ing you to din­ner for your birth­day and you can eat what you want”. I felt that some­how a part of my life had come full cir­cle. I could hard­ly con­tain my emo­tions. What I real­ly antic­i­pat­ed how­ev­er was that the Jamaican peo­ple would con­tin­ue on the path of account­abil­i­ty. Downward trend­ing crime and ter­ror, a revived agri-sec­tor, three con­tin­u­ous quar­ters of pos­i­tive growth,a buoy­ant tourism indus­try and opti­mism on the part of poten­tial investors. Secure in the knowl­edge that Jamaica is a coun­try on its way to first world sta­tus by way of a mar­ket econ­o­my . Instead of an ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven cult-run, banana repub­lic oper­at­ing on failed poli­cies of 40 years ago. After 5.pm I start­ed lis­ten­ing to the radio on pow­er 106 on the inter­net, it was a dif­fi­cult task try­ing to deci­pher what was going on amidst the fake accents of the many experts all vying for air­time on that medi­um. I did how­ev­er gath­er that the People’s National Party was lead­ing in the raw vote, even as a child this was the norm dur­ing nation­al elec­tions, the PNP would run away with the raw vote , which is the direct total of elec­tors who cast their vote. the raw vote in Jamaica how­ev­er has nev­er been clean, when one fac­tors in vot­er intimidation,ballot box stuff­ing, the steal­ing of bal­lot box­es, dead vot­ers on the vot­ers list, elec­tors vot­ing a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of times,and a pletho­ra of oth­er anti demo­c­ra­t­ic acts. Both Parties have been guilty of these prac­tices, so to a large extent the raw vote was nev­er a reli­able barom­e­ter for mea­sur­ing how elec­tions would turn out,they gen­er­al­ly result­ed in show­ing up the dis­par­i­ty with the amount of votes com­ing out of gar­ri­son con­stituen­cies against the amount of elec­tors liv­ing in those com­mu­ni­ties. However it would be naiveté’ of me to believe that if the raw vote total kept going up for the PNP that it would not seri­ous­ly impact the elec­tions in their favor, which is exact­ly what hap­pened. So at 8.pm I logged off the inter­net closed my busi­ness place and walked out know­ing that Jamaica had made the deci­sion to return to a wel­fare state. I walked away feel­ing angry, I felt that the Jamaica Labor Party should cease con­test­ing elec­tions in Jamaica, let the coun­try be sole­ly the charge of the PNP and let them live in the squalor they vote for time and again. At that moment I wished that all labor par­ty sup­port­ers should have a way of leav­ing the morass , and all who vot­ed for Portia Simpson Miller should be forced to live with the con­se­quences of their actions and cer­tain­ly not allowed to leave.

Portia Lucretia  Simpson Miller and parts of the con­stituen­cy she has rep­re­sent­ed for decades.

Since Universal adult suf­frage Jamaicans have gone to the polls 16 times, of those 16 times the People’s National Party have won 9 con­tests to the 7 of the Jamaica Labor par­ty. Previous to the dubi­ous­ly his­toric sin­gle term for the JLP, the People’s National Party held office for a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly his­toric con­tin­u­ous ¹⁸¹⁄₂ years, Pundits, com­men­ta­tors, media types and plain PNP sup­port­ers arro­gant­ly pro­claim Jamaica to be PNP coun­try. Some have argued that the JLP is sim­ply a filler for the coun­try when they are a lit­tle tired of PNP gov­er­nance. The results of the last elec­tion seem to cement that notion and as one ecsta­t­ic crash pro­gram enthu­si­ast crowed online quote “the whole coun­try now orange”, refer­ring to the tell-tale orange col­or of the PNP. To these die-hard it mat­ters not that this is emblem­at­ic of how Jamaicans vote when they do not get their way , in 1980 Manley was only able to hold onto 9 seats out of a total 60 and came close to los­ing his, many argue to this day that Michael Manley actu­al­ly lost his seat but was allowed to keep it to min­i­mize the shame . In the 90’s Edward Seaga saw his for­tunes erased and he was deliv­ered a crush­ing defeat , man­ag­ing to hold onto a measly 8 seats out of 60. This pat­tern of vot­ing either points to an elec­torate that throws hissy fits, or one that has vio­lent mood swings.. I would haz­ard that the for­mer is clos­er to the truth. Jamaicans vote their own self­ish inter­ests. Their inter­ests are usu­al­ly as base as their bel­lies, If Jamaica was PNP coun­try as some pro­claim how could Edward Seaga have won 51 seats in 1980? The truth is there was no flour, sug­ar, rice , salt fish or any of the things we like on the shelves in Jamaica’s stores, that was the deter­mi­nant in those elections.

Whatever the rea­sons for the dis­ap­pear­ance of those items from store shelves is for the prog­nos­ti­ca­tors and pun­dits to argue. Hungry peo­ple grav­i­tate to where they feel they will get fed, peo­ple want­ed their sta­ples back , they vot­ed for Seaga and they got their sta­ples back. The PNP has always being the par­ty that promis­es every­thing, Government jobs in abun­dance, of course to an unso­phis­ti­cat­ed elec­torate this is music to their ears, of course they are going to grav­i­tate to that par­ty. The fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between the par­ties is rather sim­ple, one par­ty offers promis­es , plat­i­tudes, and hand­outs, it appeals to the base needs of the most vul­ner­a­ble to win elec­tions , after which it mis­us­es scarce resources to pay off hacks and loy­al­ists, oth­ers are placed on the pub­lic pay­rolls where they con­tin­ue to bleed the state with­out any returns on the resources hand­ed out to them . In some cas­es many nev­er did a min­ute’s work yet they have col­lect­ed salaries for years .

The oth­er par­ty has the cor­rect for­mu­la, it under­stands that pros­per­i­ty can­not come through hand­outs, or polit­i­cal patron­age, but will only be accom­plished through low crime , invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, edu­ca­tion and a mar­ket dri­ven strat­e­gy, this usu­al­ly means that the pub­lic pay­roll is purged of dead wood. There has got to be belt-tight­en­ing and in some cas­es aus­ter­i­ty is nec­es­sary. This is gen­er­al­ly seen as arro­gant, cold-heart­ed and cru­el, so back to the par­ty of hand outs they go wel­come to Jamaica. Business does not like uncer­tain­ty, it does­n’t like bel­li­cose rhetoric, hence there is no one beat­ing down Jamaica’s doors beg­ging to invest there. The rea­son for this is that there is no con­ti­nu­ity nei­ther par­ty wants to con­tin­ue a pro­gram that will poten­tial­ly bring cred­it to the oth­er, in the end the coun­try suffers

The PNP will form the next Government in short order, once again they will have access to all that they craved, demand­ed, and some­how believe to be their birth-right, the reigns of pow­er and access to the pub­lic cof­fers. They will be forced to bal­ance the demands of lend­ing insti­tu­tions that the work­force be slashed, against those who vot­ed for their JEEP-full of jobs. It will be inter­est­ing to see how this will be accom­plished , my guess is that there will be seri­ous fall­out in this bal­anc­ing act , cul­mi­nat­ing into a with­hold­ing of funds from lend­ing agen­cies and a return to a demo­niz­ing of cap­i­tal­ists and their insti­tu­tions, upon which there will be hell to pay from those who sold their votes on the promise of crash pro­gram jobs in the JEEP. There are two class­es of PNP sup­port­ers, the sac­ri­fi­cial lambs who con­sis­tent­ly fall vic­tim to the promis­es that are made to them and the elit­ists who actu­al­ly becomes filthy rich from lucra­tive con­tracts, and pay­offs. It will con­tin­ue this way until the elec­torate real­izes there are no free lunch­es, sac­ri­fices will have to be made, some­times those who sac­ri­fice will not ben­e­fit from those sac­ri­fices, but their chil­dren and the coun­try will be bet­ter for it.

The Labor par­ty has made tremen­dous mis­cal­cu­la­tions and mis­takes, none more pro­found than the Manat Phillips and Phelps mat­ter involv­ing Christopher (Dudus) Coke. This has left an indeli­ble scar on the JLP, a good friend of mine swears that the defeat of the JLP is direct­ly because they have not moved to make the Opposition a par­ty to how monies in (JDIP) The Jamaica infra­struc­tur­al devel­op­ment pro­gram are spent. Really ? I was real­ly unaware of that lev­el of sophis­ti­ca­tion of the elec­torate, sure­ly this is news to me , it may very well be true but I am more inclined to go with my instincts and my gut feel­ings , they sim­ply do not under­stand the chal­lenges of a weak world econ­o­my and the con­se­quences to small depen­dent economies like Jamaica’s.

Those in the media ‚let me be spe­cif­ic the Editorial board of the Gleaner, the coun­try’s old­est news paper has now tak­en it onto them­selves to be in charge of the post-elec­tion exhuma­tion and post-mortem, of course they are very hap­py to dole out advice to young Andrew Holness about why he lost and what he should do to ensure that he will be rel­e­vant going for­ward. The gall and temer­i­ty of these arro­gant Pharisees is shock­ing, nev­er mind that Andrew Holness is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of suc­cess, at age 39 Holness is accom­plished aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, has a stel­lar record as edu­ca­tion min­is­ter and has demon­stra­bly shown that he is capa­ble of lead­ing and achiev­ing suc­cess. Their arro­gance has no bounds when they pre­sume to sug­gest to the JLP that the youth arm G2K is some­how respon­si­ble for the par­ty’s defeat. At the core of this pre­sump­tu­ous­ness is the argu­ment that because G2K revealed to the world the crass uncul­tured war­mon­ger­ing propen­si­ty of Portia Simpson Miller they some­how dis­re­spect­ed the Jamaican Queen (sic).

Whatever mate­r­i­al G2K put into the pub­lic domain is fair game, as long as the mate­r­i­al was not doc­tored , changed or oth­er­wise adjust­ed to mis­rep­re­sent the facts, Portia must account for her crass behav­ior in pub­lic, She can­not hide behind gen­der as her sur­ro­gates, and fel­low cultists expect . Man or woman we are respon­si­ble we for our actions. Portia has ben­e­fit­ed immense­ly from the largess of Jamaica’s tax pay­ers, she is a car­rear politi­cian who has always been on the gov­ern­men­t’s cheese in one role or anoth­er, she ought to know how to con­duct her­self at least in pub­lic. No one will be ter­ri­fied of her cult fol­low­ing when we talk about her boor­ish behav­ior, that is what her advis­ers at the Gleaner’s Editorial board need to talk to her about. I don’t need to be told of her dis­gust­ing­ly embar­rass­ing behav­ior which I wit­nessed in the late 80’s when her thugs were not allowed to steal bal­lot box­es from the White Hall Elementary school. She rolled on the ground in the mid­dle of the streets , of course claim­ing that her sup­port­ers were being harassed, nev­er mind that her con­stituen­cy is nowhere near Whitehall avenue in Saint Andrew North.

So to the PNP consultants/​gay lob­by at the edi­to­r­i­al board of the Gleaner mind your busi­ness, you have done a tremen­dous job of elect­ing a no idea washed up throw­back to Jamaica House and placed a homo­sex­u­al agen­da on the front burn­er, your job is done, leave the labor par­ty to do what it must. Labor did not lose because of G2K, it lost because there are not enough vot­ers who under­stand the com­plex issues of the 21’st cen­tu­ry, they under­stand the needs of “eat­ing a food and run­ning wid it”.

Former Barbados prime Minister Tom Adams(now deceased) put it best when he said he would not want to be prime min­is­ter of Jamaica because of the high rate of illit­er­a­cy , he was right when he said it in the 80’s ‚though Tom is gone his words are as true now as they were then.