Former prime minister of Jamaica P J Patterson turns 88 on April 10.
April 8, 2023
P J Patterson — a giant in our midst undefeated at 88
In recognition of P J Patterson’s 88th birthday on April 10, his transformational innings to better the lot of our people must be celebrated by Jamaicans of goodwill everywhere.
At the centre of his focus were the revolutions he propagated in technology, telecommunications, and physical infrastructure. But he was always clear that modernity would not come without significant advances in education and land reform.
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At the beginning, his education DNA was implanted by his schoolteacher mother Ina Miriame James, and maternal grandmother, Elize Matilda James, matriarch and principal teacher standing at the centre of the family of educators in rural Hanover. That family of educators also famously included his grandfather William James, headmaster of Cocoon Elementary, where Jamaica’s first Prime Minister Sir Alexander Bustamante attended… Invariably the well-spring of his patriotic impulse would have been first stirred during his fifth form years at Calabar High School.
His alma mater, then located at Studley Park Road in Kingston, would also have been inspiringly enveloped in the pursuit of excellence, nurtured in the environs of Old Jones Town, and Trench Town, that gave the nation seven Rhodes Scholars in a decade and a half, a Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, the two previous governors of the Bank of Jamaica, our last two poet laureates, path breaking scientists, the great West Indies cricketer Collie Smith, and the immortal Bob Marley.
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PATTERSON … praised for his work particularly in technology advancement, education, housing and land reform.
However, it was in 1959 that the Calabar High, UWI graduate and 24-year-old London School of Economics award-winning law student, moved by the call of history, his attraction to Norman Manley’s unmatched legal mind and political nobility, postponed his studies and entered the stage to serve as party organiser for St Elizabeth. A student of history with a legendary memory, he learnt important lessons from that period, and would one day apply the personnel and policy blueprint engendered by his leader Norman Manley. In due course, his party annals would record that he successfully delivered three out of four candidates in the general election campaign that year, masterminded Michael Manley’s leadership victory and coordinated the massive 1972 election triumph of the People’s National Party over the Jamaica Labour Party.
Seized by his sense of timing and historic mission, the later eminent Middle Temple Queen’s Counsel, like his mentor before him, having forsook the satisfying rewards of a successful practice, took the case of the people and emerged as the first Afro-Jamaican to be elected prime minister in 1993. Importantly, the times found him fully prepared as a multi-portfolioed deputy prime minister with wide experiences, with an encyclopaedic armoury of our public and private sector capacities and a clear vision of Jamaica’s potential.
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Critically, also, he had long embraced the Garveyan dictum that education offered the platform elixir to self-upliftment and self-dignity for the black masses.
Having laid the technological infrastructure, his planned revolutions in education and land reform beckoned. From his canvas of possibilities, he intricately designed a programme of reordering and change that shone brightly through his ROSE programme which rationalised school curriculum. This was accompanied by an accreditation regime which precipitated the flowering of new universities and institutions such as University of Technology, MICO University College, and Northern Caribbean University.
Prompted by the chronic underperformance of the nation’s youth, the organ of transformation lay in the establishment of his 2004 Task Force on Education Reform, chaired by Dr Rae Davis, which included the current finance minister, Dr Nigel Clarke.
He encapsuled its place and the new direction for education in fulsome terms: “Education has to be the key driver of social and economic transformation…A precursor to the knowledge society. His goals spoke conclusively of full stakeholder participation, equitable and accessible education for all, accountability, transparency, and performance at all levels, a globally competitive workforce and a disciplined culturally-aware and ethical Jamaican citizen.
Critically also, the magnitude of his work led to the creation of a number of watershed institutions: The National Education Inspectorate, the National Parenting Support Commission, and the National College for Educational Leadership. It is noteworthy that at the conclusion of the task force report, P J underscored his non-partisan edict by ordering the team to resume its work in the face of Opposition Leader Edward Seaga’s critique, that early childhood education should have been prioritised and was not adequately addressed. The task force, having made the correction, Patterson had comprehensively laid the base for a modern education system – a feat unprecedented in scope, span and accomplishment.
Patterson’s role in championing the cause of ‘land for the landless’ tells an epic story of social engineering, which saw the fulfillment of his ancestral mission to provide security of tenure to the mass of the Jamaican people. In this, he oversaw the affordable and accelerated provision of 58,000 housing solutions islandwide, including 30,010 titles and 28,000 letters of possession to first time landowners under ‘Operation Pride’– at 78 sites, from White Hall, Negril; to Donaldson in the environs of Morant Point.
He also facilitated hundreds of additional inner-city units through the Relocation 2000 Programme at Railway lane and Barracks Road (Montego Bay), Arnett Gardens, Majestic Gardens, Wilton Gardens, Little King Street, Denham Town, Tavares Gardens in Kingston, among others.
At another level, he met the aspirations of the working and the professional classes at housing sites such as Wellington Heights, Wellington Glades, Mona Heights town houses, Pines of Karachi, College Green, Long Mountain (St Andrew); Fisher Road and Clover (Mandeville); Luana and Font Hill in St Elizabeth; Norwich (Portland); Belle Aire, Mount Edgecombe (St Ann); Eden Park, Frontier 1 (St Mary); Bushy Park (Clarendon), and many more. In the process, he not only facilitated our long-suffering public sector workers on Beverly Hills, but even more profound, he completed the monumental task of lifting an entire marginalised working class cohort into a stratified middle-class future in less than a decade – a feat hitherto unthinkable and unattainable.
That apart, he underlined his purposefulness to provide affordable shelter access with the dramatic reduction of NHT mortgage rates from eight per cent and above to two per cent. Further, it was P J Patterson who introduced the LAMP Programme to regularise intractable land, and crafted legislation with the promulgation of the 2005 Registration of Titles, Amendment and Cadastral Mapping Act. When all facets of his work in the shelter sector are considered, it unquestionably constitutes the greatest instance of land reform in the western world.
Commendable also, for those seeking to besmirch his accomplishments with uninformed commentary on judgement calls such as FINSAC, the transcripts will show that he did not walk away nor sought exoneration by denigrating the offending local bankers whom he empowered through his Jamaicanisation of the banking sector. For certain, they over-leveraged their bank assets to the detriment of pensioners and savers, but he did not dwell there, nor did he hide behind Cabinet’s collective responsibility or place blame on the unhelpful dogmatism of subject ministers.
He took action and instituted corrective measures. That is why he exceeds all other leaders in the establishment of agencies of accountability and good governance. The roll call is conclusive: The Financial Services Commission; the Fair Trading Commission; the Jamaica Deposit Insurance Corporation; the Office of the Public Defender; the Corruption Prevention Commission, the Police Public Complaints Authority, the Political Ombudsman, the Electoral Commission; the Tax reform Administration Project; the Anti-Doping Commission; the Universal Access Fund, the National Health Fund, JCIF, and PATH.
Though humble and unsung, the vastness and profundity of his achievements take him to the centre of any conversation on the appointment of a National Hero. As I remarked at the beginning, perhaps we are too near his greatness to appreciate it, but a later generation and unvarnished history certainly will.
In the meantime, let us tell the young of his glorious revolutions, of his organic vision which precipitated the technology, telecommunications, and education advances they now enjoy; the transportation centres, upgraded airports, and seaports, the highways and other infrastructure breakthroughs to meet the imperatives of our tourism uplift and the new economy. And yes, never forget his monumental delivery of affordable shelter solutions for human decency, self-dignity, and financial security.
And so, his oath to the silent heroes of the national movement and PNP colleagues gone before has been fulfilled. His journey of faith, grace and patriotism is almost done, but his flame will always glow in the international arenas of the poor and powerless, while his deathless name will live on through the ages.
In truth, Patterson sought no glory from his enterprise; he was determined to confront the unhealed wounds of our past and prepare his nation to confront the challenges of a new time. In this, he answered our desperate call for transformation with exceptionalism.
And yes, again years from now, scholars will marvel at the depth of his contribution, which, irrefutably mark him as the seminal architect of the modern Jamaican state. So let us in our time honour him and be grateful that he still remains, at 88, a giant in our midst.
Happy birthday, P J!
Paul Buchanan is a former national coordinator of Operation Pride, and one-term Member of Parliament for St Andrew West Rural.
