Editorial | Policies, please, PNP

It is a largely valueless exercise to debate the validity of the opinion poll showing the People’s National Party (PNP) leading among potential voters if a general election were to be called at this time. The PNP is ahead of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) by five percentage points.

This newspaper’s greater concern, however – which we previously aired in March – is that the PNP appears willing to ride to government on the back of voters’ seeming discontent with Andrew Holness’ administration, rather than on the basis of policies and programmes it has put to them. So, if the PNP maintains the old political script, it will continue to flag the Government’s perceived missteps and failures, then on the eve of the election – constitutionally due in 2025 – publish a manifesto, which Jamaicans will have only a fleeting opportunity to review, critique and absorb.

In other words, the party is playing it safe. Its policies, which we presume it has, cannot be criticised (or stolen, it might claim) if they are not out in the public domain.

Jamaicans deserve something different from a government in waiting. Voters should know, rather than when it gains office, if that happens, what the PNP stands for, and more importantly, what it will do with power if it gets it.

We return to this matter in the face of last week’s release of the results of the poll commissioned by the party, and done by the respected pollster, Don Anderson of Market Research Services. It revealed that the PNP had the support of 30.2 per cent of intended voters, 2.1 percentage points better than when Mr Anderson conducted a similar survey four months earlier. The JLP lost nearly three percentage points. However, nearly 45 per cent of registered voters were undecided about the parties or whether they will cast ballots in the next election – almost a full point higher than in February.

BANAL CRITICISMS

Understandably, the PNP is buoyed by these numbers, especially since a year ago, with a support of only 18 per cent, it trailed the JLP by 13 percentage points. This improvement was achieved largely because of a returning of the PNP’s base, which abandoned it in the September 2020 election, and the public disenchantment with the administration over a range of issues, including the recent big pay hikes to ministers and other parliamentarians.

The Opposition latches on to the Government’s missteps and indiscretions, and often ratchets up its condemnations with banal criticisms.

A case in point was last Friday’s speech by the party’s general secretary, Dayton Campbell, at a PNP divisional conference in Ocho Rios. A medical doctor, who has self-confessed ambitions of becoming the island’s housing minister, Dr Campbell lambasted what he said were the Government’s failure in delivering affordable homes.

That would be alright if it were underpinned by substantive policy alternatives. The real shame of Dr Campbell’s presentation was his cynical ridiculing of a private-sector initiative to convert cargo containers to homes, which has been endorsed by the Government.

He called for the construction of affordable housing, then juxtaposed that against Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ supposed “mansion” in the capital’s choice neighbourhood of Beverly Hills and the PM’s advocacy for the container homes. Dr Campbell suggested that there was indignity in living in container homes.

Dr Campbell made no attempt to contextualise the development of container homes, the design elements contained in them, and neither did he note the growing global movement of converting containers to homes. Nor did he analyse the cost implications of developing container homes. They were portrayed merely as hot metal boxes.

Maybe container homes are not a good housing option for Jamaica. But Dr Campbell’s vulgar and irrational politicisation of the issue is not the way to make that determination.

At another PNP divisional conference on Sunday, the party’s leader, Mark Golding, celebrated the latest poll results, noted the achievements of the previous PNP administration, and some of the controversies that have dogged the present Government. Jamaicans recognised they could trust the PNP, he said.

What Mr Golding did not do was offer specific policies that an administration which he leads would pursue.

The PNP had gained support, he noted, without having yet “tun it up” (applied pressure or up the revs).

The “tun up” this newspaper wishes for are policies, not political noise.