Dear Editor,

I can’t believe that after 18 years in government, the PNP is leading a bunch of poor people to demonstrate and admit that they are still poor. If this is not an admission by both the PNP and their supporters that 18-plus years of the PNP did not help them to grow and develop, I don’t know what else is.

Is the JLP falling asleep with this clear eye-opener? They could not have had a bigger “Chrismus and New Year bonus”. Or is the JLP too pathetic to capitalise on this bonus?

As a party, the JLP is easily manipulated and vulnerable to the PNP’s public relations machinery, but even against that background, they could do a much better job. What they need to learn and understand is that Jamaican politics is petty, and we know which party is dominating the minds of our people and what strategy is being used. Have we benefited from that mental dominance? The answer is a big “No”. Can someone tell me how the poor got to loving the PNP so much? A party offering no economic growth since the 70s?

A lot of people, especially Kingstonians, who have not worked for many years, always seemed to take a liking to the PNP. The PNP never promised us economic growth and since the 70s they never delivered economic growth either. But they seem to get a lot a poor people to follow them. The questions is then, what do most Jamaicans’ want? Handouts?

A day will come when we will have to face our judgements, and the longer we postpone it is the worse the repercussions are going to be. We need to stop encouraging people to love poverty, but instead encourage them to get productive, and grow and develop themselves – and in the process grow and develop their family and in the event, Jamaica.

Wake up, Jamaicans, Ms Portia is not your godmother, and the method encouraged by the PNP is to take taxes from a few of us for handout purposes. This method seems to work for winning elections, but unfortunately the consequence is that it makes more and more Jamaicans lazy, poor and unproductive. Look at Ms Portia’s constituency, look at Mr Thwaites’, look at Dr Omar Davies’, look at many parts of Phillip Paulwell’s, etc, and now Manchester is in recent times heading in that direction.

God forbid if this method of handout politics is being practised by the current JLP administration. Jamaica would be “dun fa”.

John Blake

johnny.blake45@yahoo.com