Opposition Leader Mark Golding addressing the People's National Party's Knockpatrick Divisional Conference. (Photo: Kasey Williams)
July 16, 2022
Opposition living in a fantasy world
In fairy-stale politics and economics, lollipops are free, people ride on unicorns in the sky, innate human nature is suspended, gravity does not exist, and elephants dangle over giant precipices on the tip of a thread. In fantasy politics and fantasy economics, anything and everything is possible at the snap of a finger or the wave of a magic wand. We earthlings, however, live in a world that is the exact opposite of fantasy. Reality is our mortal ruler.
As I see it, there are three big functional differences between an Opposition party and an Administration. Oppositions can live in a fantasy world, but an Administration cannot. Oppositions can simply ‘run off their mouths’ with wild abandonment. An Administration has to carefully consider the immediate, medium- and long-term political, social and economic consequences of every decision. An Opposition can often add the sum of 1+1 and get a result of 11. They can afford the luxury mathematical fantasy. An Administration knows that mathematics is an exact science and has to abide by its rules.
Latest News, Sports
March 21, 2025
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Rohan Watson finished fifth in the men’s 60m final on Friday’s opening day of the World Athletics Indoor Championships at the Nanj...
Dangerous populism
While growing up in rural St Mary my grandfather always reminded me that planning for ‘a rainy day’ was an important key to success. I get the impression this is based on years of observations and research, but those who espouse populist politics never got that critical memo.
Latest News, News
March 23, 2025
CLARENDON, Jamaica – Former Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) senator Warren Newby on Sunday emerged victorious in an internal poll to decide the party’s rep...
Indeed, populist politics seldom think about a rainy day. The orientation of populist politicians is: Let us all eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow will take care of itself. The reality is, however, tomorrow does not take care of itself. People have to carefully plan for tomorrow.
Populist politicians are often rich and/or from privileged backgrounds. Do they spend and/or invest their personal fortunes, according to the formulae that they espouse for other people’s resources and those of the countries that they fight tooth and nail to lead? No!
Latest News, Sports
March 22, 2025
KINGSTON, Jamaica - Jamaica failed to add to their lone bronze medal at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing despite having two men in ...
Populists called themselves progressives. Progressive is a euphemism for the failed brand called socialism. International benchmarks tell us there is no successful socialist country on the earth. None!
I believe we must be very wary of those who dangle fool’s gold before us. Those who sing that a whole heap of billions here and a whole heap a billions there is just what the doctor ordered, in my view, are seeking to play the equivalent of economic and social Russian roulette with people’s livelihoods and lives.
Consider this: “People’s National Party (PNP) President Mark Golding is demanding that the Government increase the amount of social spending allocated for low-income groups struggling with a cost-of-living crisis and spiralling global inflation.
“He put the price tag of the bailout for Jamaica’s poorest at $40 billion.
“Golding, who was addressing the PNP Women’s Movement Conference on Sunday, lambasted the Holness Administration for what he describes as ‘minimal’ support for citizens beleaguered by soaring prices for basic commodities such as fuel and food.
” ‘This Government is pulling the wool over the eyes over the people because they are singing the message that they are doing something to support the population, but what they are doing is superficial and cannot have a meaningful impact on the lives of those who need help,” Golding, who is also Opposition leader, told the partisan crowd.
Last Tuesday, Finance and Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke announced in the House of Representatives a welfare package of almost $4 billion for Jamaicans buffeted by rising prices for goods and services. That welfare pledge is in addition to $3.5 billion of support unveiled earlier in March.” (The Gleaner, July 11, 2022)
Two Tuesdays ago, Golding and others from the Opposition applauded when Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr Nigel Clarke announced the mentioned $2.7 billion in additional social intervention expenditure. Naturally, folks are now asking: Which Mark Golding are we to believe?
This is not the first or second time Golding has pulled this kind of political stunt. I believe folks should take a dim view of it. A leader, in my view, needs to demonstrate the courage to speak his mind inside and outside of parliament.
Global troubles
Of course, fantasy politics allows for speaking out of both sides of the mouth. What is not fantasy is that there is a global rise in the cost of living, contrary to what some would want us to believe.
Check this: “A staggering 71 million more people around the world are experiencing poverty as a result of soaring food and energy prices that climbed in the weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) said in a report Thursday.
“The UNDP estimates that 51.6 million more people fell into poverty in the first three months after the war, living off US$1.90 a day or less.
“This pushed the total number globally at this threshold to 9 per cent of the world’s population. An additional 20 million people slipped to the poverty line of US$3.20 a day.
” ‘The cost of living impact is almost without precedent in a generation… and that is why it is so serious,’ UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said at the launch of the report.” (Jamaica Observer, July 7, 2022)
I believe that one of the worst errors Jamaica could make in this period of great troubles is to jump onto the hamster wheel of those who are recommending that we crack up the printing presses and spend, spend, spend. That is fantasy.
As I see it, the Administration needs to continue to apply a series of carefully crafted and calibrated measures in a timely manner in order to tame the monster of inflation. These measures include relief packages for low-income families and the vulnerable, direct payments to the most vulnerable, rebate on utilities, targeted funding for small businesses, and subsidies for industries critical to the survival of the economy.
Of course, the role of an independent central bank, which has the power to craft policies based on its priorities for the monetary system cannot be discounted among the raft of measures that must be applied simultaneously and carefully to tame the inflation beast.
Anything else is fantasy, I believe. Why? Relief packages, if not carefully calibrated, can result in more inflation, instead of lowering of inflation. My layman’s understanding tells me that if too much money is pumped into the economy too fast, inflation grows, but this time on steroids.
Golding did not deliver a formula for how his $40-billion scheme would be applied. But, from experience in this country, we all should know how ‘run wid it’ jaunts are distributed.
Jamaica was brought to the brink of economic collapse because of similarly related irresponsible episodes in the 1990s. It seems that some among us want Jamaica to be broke like Sri Lanka. It is a nonsense we must democratically reject.
My understanding of supply and demand tells me that simply dumping ton loads money into the economy in the hope of helping the poor and the most vulnerable is fantasy economics. It does not help the poor, it makes the poor worse off.
Jamaica would be foolhardy to return to the days, for example, when our inflation rate skyrocketed. Inflation averaged 27.2 per cent per annum over the period 1990-1999, according to Bank of Jamaica figures. I do not think the best and brightest of youth population are willing to wait around another 20 years to see us set back the economy on a steady path, if we again repeated the errors of 1990s.
I believe the 90s was the worst period in this country. The economy was in shambles. Social decline took off on a sprint. Ironically, while the world economy and most Caribbean countries grew by an average of between three per cent and five per cent in the 90s, Jamaica’s economy floundered under the dead weight of a Government which presided over major money scandals that damaged the country’s reputation and set back the economy for decades. I presented copious evidence in previous articles.
Some among us who are better informed, but I believe are quite happy to continue to sow the rotten seeds of ignorance, have not told the public that countries which do not have excess revenues have to dip deep into their reserves to fund the kind of spending which Golding is advocating. Common sense says, that when you dip into reserves the ability to control inflation is then weakened. I believe Golding’s $40 billion proposed spending spree is tantamount to economic suicide, and should be resisted with every sinew.
Delivery is key
In my The Agenda column on August 2017 I noted, among other things: “The Opposition does not want the Administration to put runs on the board. Simultaneously, the PNP wants the Government to bat on a wicket where they are not only the opposing team, but also the standing and third umpire. It seems they have not learned from the defeat of February 25, 2016. The suspect cricketing actions of the PNP are now conspicuous, even to political ostriches.”
Some five years later, very little as changed as regards the PNP’s approach. The ruling JLP, quite sensibly, however, has been focussing on putting runs on the board. Prime Minister Andrew Holness knows that, especially in these bitingly hard times, results which register in people’s pockets and dinner tables are far more important than wild rhetoric. I have said it before in this space, but it bears repeating that the majority of especially our youth voters today are not preoccupied with ideology. They are pragmatic and are asking: “What have you done for me lately?”
I believe folks, increasingly, want a politics that delivers tangible benefits for themselves and the country. As I noted in this space many years ago, voters want ‘A love they can feel’. Here I am, of course, taking liberties with a local classic — John Holt’s I want a love I can feel.
Last Tuesday the Holness Administration scored what I believe were three impressive boundaries; sixes, as a matter of fact.
These announcements by the Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr Nigel Clarke, to me, shows that the Administration is thinking about the needs of Jamaica well beyond today:
* The GOJ intends to update the Public Sector Staff Orders of 2004 to increase maternity leave from 40 days to three calendar months.
* The GOJ intends to update the Public Sector Staff Orders of 2004 to introduce paternity leave, for the first time in the public service, for fathers of newborns, for a specific time and on specific terms to be finalised.
* The GOJ intends to update the Public Sector Staff Orders of 2004 to introduce family leave for adoptive parents who are bringing a new child into the home.
These are steps in the right direction if we want to help to halt social decline and build a much more inclusive society.
At the flash of the announcements by Dr Clarke some — including a former minister of government — who say their umbilical cord is planted at 89 Old Hope Road took to social media to throw a wet blanket on them. To me, there are some developments that are obviously good for the mental health of this country, given our history of enslavement and colonialism.
It seems, however, that the PNP remains fixated with its twofold and moribund strategy. It continues to preach that gloom, doom, hell fire, damnation, and pestilence will befall Jamaica and her people unless it is returned to Jamaica House. Second, any positive which the country is experiencing and/or might experience is because of the policies and programmes of previous PNP administrations. This strategy is pinnacled on ‘old-time politics’. It has failed.
You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas said Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the United States Congress.
There is a new and more discerning type of voter who is no longer concerned with who planted the tree. That is immaterial to them. They just want to know the tree is there. Their focus is who can maintain the shade and fertilise the tree to continually bear edible and ‘pickable’ fruit.
That is the new common sense in politics.
Garfield Higgins is an educator, journalist and a senior advisor to the minister of education and youth. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.
Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr Nigel Clarke
HOLNESS… scored three impressive boundaries last week
