Monday, February 26, 2024 is the date set for the holding of our 17th local government elections since Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944. The outcome will be significant and revealing.
As I see it, the choice is between an unusable past and a new and sustained ambition for Jamaica. To me the former is encapsulated by Mark Golding and the People’s National Party (PNP), and the latter by Andrew Holness and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).
Why have I categorised the PNP as a relic of the past? Twenty-two days away from when Jamaicans will cast their votes in the local government elections the PNP still has not presented a practical, cohesive, and fully costed set of plans, policies and programmes for the sustained growth and development of Jamaica. Golding has been up and down the highways and byways of this land for the last two-and-a-half years. He needs to be in a position to definitively inform citizens across the country how a future PNP administration would better address especially the major and long-standing issues that affect our lives. To date, I see no tangible evidence that Golding has such a plan for Jamaica.

The past is not the future
The PNP evidently has not got the memo that empty sloganeering, formulaic shouts about corruption, bait and switch, “puss inna bag” politics, threats of resurrecting awful ghosts from the past, incessant use of plain folks propaganda, the unleashing of false compassion and the shedding of crocodiles tears supposedly as evidence of great love for the poor and downtrodden, “nah keep again” (as we say in the streets) — the go-to lever of Opposition parties that are often running on ‘E’ — will not do. Those antediluvian tactics are feeble, some are taking final breaths, and others are totally dead.
Jamaicans today are asking, “What you have done for me lately?” Here I am taking slight liberties with the title of a 1980s hit song by Janet Jackson. Folks are simultaneously asking: “What can you do for me soon?” It is not that politics has disintegrated into a primitive soup of transactional exchanges as some posit. I think this new demand of the majority is an index of a practical evolution by voters. Folks realise that their immediate and future needs/aspirations and those of loved ones are rooted in real results.
On the matter of results, it has been long, since I have heard importers and exporters, big or small, bawling that they cannot get the foreign currency they need to carry out their daily business and/or deal with international obligations. It has been many years since I have heard that anyone has been killed because they were traders in the once-deadly black market in foreign currency. Many years ago a craft market in St Ann was an infamous hub for the illegal trade in hard currencies. Good riddance!
I remember them well. The days leading up to the reading of the annual budget, particularly the revenue portion by the minister of finance, were times of excruciating anxiety for most Jamaicans. Folks became literally terrified at the awful certainty of a barrage of new taxes. Before many Jamaicans had recovered from the imposition of the higher tax package from the previous year, more, new, and higher taxes were dumped on us with mechanical regularity year after year.
Then whoever was the finance minister received hate. Some wished for him to be impaled and quartered.
It is a fact that finance ministers are disliked in most countries, globally. Approaching six years in one of the most difficult jobs in the Cabinet, Dr Nigel Clarke has positively broken through the almost impregnable wall of abhorrence for ministers of finance in this country. Today, we have a finance minister who is greatly respected locally, regional, and internationally.
He did not achieve that precedent-setting feat by shouting abracadabra while waving the proverbial magic wand. It has been acknowledged, far and wide, that Clarke, as part of the Andrew Holness-led Administration, has consistently applied the diligent application of prudent policies and programmes which have set Jamaica on a firm path to achieving faster and sustained growth and development.
We are today in the best economic position since independence in 1962. The most recent report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is vindication that Jamaica can no longer be justifiably stamped with the ignominious label of ‘Poor Man of the Caribbean’. No well thinking Jamaican wants to reclaim that disgraceful designation.
The mentioned report said, among other things: “Over the last years, Jamaica has successfully reduced public debt, anchored inflation, and strengthened its external position. It has built a strong track record of investing in institutions and prioritising macroeconomic stability. This allowed Jamaica’s response to recent global shocks to be prudent, agile, and supportive of growth,” the review outlined.
“The economy continued to recover in 2023. After two years of rapid post-pandemic recovery, GDP [gross domestic product] growth is projected at 1.7 per cent in FY2023/24, with tourism well above pre-pandemic levels and unemployment falling to a record low of 4.5 per cent by mid-2023. Inflation is converging to the Bank of Jamaica’s target band, though it was recently impacted by an increase in transport prices, whose effects are expected to dissipate towards the end of the year,” it continued.
Based on the IMF team’s projections, inflows from tourism should result in a current account surplus for FY2023/24 that will boost the country’s international reserves position. In addition, the IMF team pointed out that the financial system is well capitalised and liquid, and the public debt continues to fall. In fact, the IMF estimates that debt will fall to 72 per cent of GDP at the end of the fiscal year, reaching its lowest level in 25 years.” (Jamaica Observer, January 19, 2024)
Some among us, for reasons that should be obvious even to the slightly discerning, are busy spreading a false narrative that economic growth is an abstract matter, the preserve of individuals like economists and the so-called ‘big man’. This kind of oratory betrays our national interests and should be democratically repudiated at every opportunity.
The local saying, “Puddin’ cyaan bake without fire,” is applicable here. It means one cannot achieve desirable/particular results without first satisfying specific preconditions. Without economic growth there are fewer tax receipts. There are poorer public services and lower and/or stunted remuneration for, especially, public sector workers, plus higher, much higher taxes for everyone. Lack of economic growth means greater hardships and reduction in the standards of living for everyone.

Reject the charlatans
On the matter of standard of living, some among us, for reasons which are obvious to all, but those who have their heads buried in contorted ignorance have been busy retailing and wholesaling a hugely damaging concentrate. The main ingredient of that poisonous brew is falsehood. These purveyors of cons preach, for example, that the thousands of jobs created in the last eight years do not pay. Their argument to its logical or more so illogical conclusion means zero dollars is better than $100 or any dollars at all. What unadulterated nonsense!
These charlatans are close relatives of con artists who, in the 1980s, inveighed against the garment industry. The opportunity that hundreds of women got to advance their economic independence was dubbed as slavery. Did these double-dealers and merchants of social and economic dependence provide alternative employment opportunities? No!
Today tricksters are again busy up and down the highways and byways of Jamaica trying to trap the unsuspecting in their snares of deception. Those who have the knowledge have a duty to warn.
Singapore, Germany, the United Kingdom, America, and I could list many other developed economies, all started at or near the bottom of the employment continuum. Through technology transfer, transformation of education systems, creation and adoption of best practices, prudent economic management, and related social investments, etc, these countries gradually escaped from the punishing clutches of a low-wage, low-output existence and achieved the necessary leap to a high-wage, high-output status. Gradually, the shackles of wide-scale societal low trust, which is almost always a natural appendage of economic and social retardation, dissipated. The rule of law simultaneously improved and societal demands became gradually more sophisticated.
There is no society that has miraculously moved from high and chronic unemployment, as was the norm in the 70s and 90s, to high-paying jobs and economic transformation overnight. Those who tell folks that they have a foolproof formula to make this possible are liars. Societal transformation is a sustained process which needs prudent managers.

Ripening fruits
As I see it, Jamaica is beginning to experience the ripening of several good economic and social fruits.
Check this: ‘Unemployment dips to record low 4.2 per cent for October 2023’
The Jamaica Observer news items said, among other things: “Jamaica’s unemployment rate dipped to a new historic low of 4.2 per cent in October, the lowest it has been since Independence, according to data released by Statistical Institute of Jamaica (Statin) on Tuesday. That is down from 4.5 per cent in April 2023, which was the previous record low for the percentage of Jamaicans who wanted a job and could not find one at the time of the survey.
“The lowering of the unemployment rate was realised as 1.32 million Jamaicans were working — more than ever in the country’s history — representing 85,200 more people working than in October 2021.
“The year-over-year data compared October 2023 to October 2021. Statin has no data for the labour force for October 2022 because at that time it was conducting the population and housing census, it said in notes accompanying the latest labour force statistics. Overall, there were 57,300 unemployed people in October 2023, 39.0 per cent fewer compared to October 2021.”
These who spew scorn on this massive achievement do not understand the Spanish proverb, “The busy man is troubled with but one devil; the idle man by a thousand.” For many years — being when the PNP was at bat — Jamaica was burdened with high unemployment and related economic blight. In 1971 the Jamaican economy grew by almost 12 per cent in that one single year — equivalent to the cumulative growth under Dr Omar Davies’ entire 14 years as minister of finance between 1993 and 2007. PNP Administrations, as I see it, are antithetical to our economic growth and development. Today we have the lowest unemployment since we started recording those numbers. Today Jamaica is demonstrating to the world that we are not children of lesser gods. We have regained respect globally. Those who are working to push us into the abyss are deceivers.

Bitter disparagers
Some obsessive curmudgeons and others corroded by mean-spiritedness grudgingly admit that the economy is in a good place. They bellow, however, that ordinary people are not benefiting. Nonsense!
The massive investments in and improvements to the working conditions of police men and women, especially over the last eight year, are beginning to show good results. Information in the public domain says a total of 163 police stations and other Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) facilities have been renovated over the period 2016 to present. Six new stations have been constructed over the same period.
Objective evidence shows that in the last eight years there has been an unprecedented investment in the fire services, specifically the repair and construction of new fire stations and the provision of equipment. Infrastructure development, particularly in roads, education and health facilities, are at an all-time high. Are our security personnel, teachers, and our fire services workforce resident in the sky?
Murders up to last week had decreased by 20 per cent when compared to the same period last year. Are the beneficiaries of the decline living on the lost planet of Atlantis? Today more Jamaicans have access to high speed Internet and potable water than any other time. Are they living in space? Recently there was the importation of 50 new garbage compactors? Are the citizens who benefit living in the stratosphere?
Many economies in the region and globally buckled during the novel coronavirus pandemic. Jamaica — because she had put up corn in her barn for the lean years (allusion here to the story of Joseph’s wise preparations for famine in Egypt) — was able give targeted financial and related support to thousands of citizens who were temporarily displaced. Are those Jamaicans living in a black hole in the far reaches of the universe?
Regression cannot be the way forward. To me, the choice before us is very clear.