The great debate has come, but not gone. The anger, fear and uncertainty surrounding the expected agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) remain and are more likely to intensify in the months ahead.

Some are still angry because the Government had been slow in understanding and responding to the crisis. Would an earlier response make adjustment less painful?

The anger is connected to the compensation of US$2,400 per day (J$215,000) to the chairman of the Finsac Enquiry, Justice Boyd Carey, and the cavalier defence of it by Finance Minister Audley Shaw that it’s ‘OK because it is in the budget’… the same budget that can only pay nurses a starting salary of about $50,000 a month and has nothing to say about reclassification.

There is fear that the hardships that are part of the deal will severely impact lives already stressed; there is uncertainty as to whether the programme will finally solve long-standing economic weaknesses. ‘Success’, it must be understood, will just about take the country back to where it was in 2007, and that was not such a great place.

After much ‘if-and-but’ about when and how to debate the IMF Letter of Intent and accompanying economic and financial policies, the event finally took place January 26 when the Government had already committed to terms and conditions and prior actions that must be undertaken before the IMF will agree to a US$1.3-billion loan over 27 months.

Expectation late last week was that the draft agreement would go before the IMF’s executive board February 3, assuming that the Jamaican Government meets two more conditions; all elements of the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) must be in place and Government must either find a buyer for Air Jamaica or shut it down.

These conditions are likely to be met: All major players have signed on to the JDX and Finance Minister Shaw has been upbeat about the success of the scheme under which some $700 billion of high-interest government bonds must be traded for new bonds at lower rates of interest and longer maturities. And Prime Minister Bruce Golding has left no doubt that Air Jamaica will be off the government accounts, one way or the other.

So while there is hardly any doubt that the deal will be struck, and the IMF and other multilateral funds will soon follow, questions about the credibility of the programme and the capacity of the Bruce Golding administration to carry it through remain unanswered.

First, it must be acknowledged that these are difficult times. The administration inherited a weak, underperforming economy sustained by heavy borrowing over many years. Mr Golding conceded that the mountain of debt has grown under his watch and interest rates have trended upwards. Further, the global recession has caused sharp cuts in Jamaica’s earnings from tourism, bauxite/alumina and remittances.

In these circumstances, the Government is raising taxes, freezing or cutting wages, reducing spending on social programmes, taking money out of the pockets of savers and pensioners, cutting funds available to tertiary-level students, cutting public investment programmes, among other things.

As pointed out by various Opposition spokesmen in the debate, these tough measures are being attempted after an unimpressive first two years in office.

Budget targets and projections have been missed consistently, as former finance minister Dr Omar Davies pointed out: “Recent experience, but particularly within this fiscal year, has greatly undermined the basis for confidence in the targets established as well as our ability to achieve them.”

Meanwhile, Mr Golding says he will do what he has to do. “We have to get our house back in order… we are faced with a situation where we have to take tough decisions, some of those may make you unpopular, but that is not going to cause us to flinch.”

The prime minister is right that the home-grown crisis has been long in the making and has been shaped by both JLP and PNP administrations. In the last 37 years, he said, growth per capita has been only 5.2 per cent, and during that period there has been negative growth for 15 years.

So there can be no doubt that there has to be a fundamental change of course for the country to have any chance of sustainably better results.

At one level the deal calls for a new way of handling economic affairs — in other words, changing habits and behaviours that have been developed over the better part of 40 years. Those banks and investors which became enormously wealthy will have to figure out new ways to make money; the private sector will have to find opportunities in the real economy that produces real goods and services; Government will have to make do with less and must get accustomed to close scrutiny and supervision by the IMF.

More important, as Dr Peter Phillips, a former PNP vice-president, correctly summarised, “The main proposition that flows from all of this is that if we want a different economic future we will need a different approach to government and politics.”

So what’s at issue is not just a matter of taking “tough decisions” as proof of intestinal fortitude. It’s about taking the right decisions and building a consensus around them so that after the 27-month breathing space the economy can finally get on a path to good health.

Essentially, this means changing how government functions: the politics of tribalism must give way to a new politics of consultation and nation building.

As Opposition leader Portia Simpson Miller pointedly remarked, “Mr Prime Minister, I say to you, you cannot manage alone. You need to talk to the people who have the experience and the people with whom you must work. The word I leave with you today is CONSULTATION” (her emphasis).

What are the prospects for this new kind of politics and governance? Now more than ever Mr Golding must not only show that he has the courage to take tough decisions, but must also have the courage to face up to the political vision he embraced as leader of the National Democratic Movement.

Now more than ever he must face down the hard men of politics in the JLP who seek partisan advantage at every turn and in every opportunity to heckle the other side for actual or presumed misdeeds.

In an unusual departure from the norm, former minister of national security Peter Phillips declared, “I am prepared to accept part of the responsibility” for the politics of tribalism and division. There was no response – at least not audible to the TV audience – when he asked his parliamentary colleagues on the other side to make the same declaration. “I know your role,” he pointedly remarked to an unidentified government MP.

Now more than ever Mr Golding should respond to that call. It’s a time, said Phillips, for cooperation and collective endeavour rather than division and partisanship; a time to adopt the tones of humility and tolerance and not yield to the traditional impulses of bombast and abusiveness rooted in the excessive tribalism of the past. Governance in the time of the IMF demands no less.

kcr@cwjamaica.com