Editorial | Where’s the beef, Mr Golding?

There is something to be said, we suppose, for Mark Golding naming 23 additional second-tier spokespersons, apart from the fact that there will now be a packed room at meetings of his shadow cabinet – 45 people – if all attend.

It’s about re-energising the People’s National Party (PNP), succession planning – and all that. Or, as Mr Golding, the PNP’s president, suggested, the move may help in attracting young people to the organisation.

But as commendable as bringing a swathe of young people into the fold and placing them in leadership roles may be, Mr Golding must be clear that this of itself won’t achieve his ultimate goal of thrusting the PNP back to government. At least, not without more.

In other words, while initially it may bring the PNP some attention, the majority of Jamaicans won’t vote for Mr Golding’s party merely because it has several new young faces and voices being critical of the actions of the Holness administration. Put another way, this attempt at rejuvenation has to convert to the articulation of policies to which voters can relate and which they trust.

TRANSFORMATIVE VISION

The PNP has to offer the electorate a transformative vision, rather than assuming that the small lead it has held in opinion surveys since mid-year is a marker of victory in the next general election. There is no certitude in a five percentage point differential, especially in polls with margins of error of plus or minus three per cent.

We have offered this advice before, given the PNP’s apparent presumption that government inertia, public concern over allegations of corruption and voter fatigue with the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) is an uncomplicated pathway to election victory. In that scenario, the opposition only needs to snipe at the JLP’s heels, pointing out its shortcomings.

We had assumed that the PNP was into a breakout moment at its annual conference in September and would begin to offer clear and coherent prescriptions to Jamaica’s myriad problems, especially ideas on how to move the economy from fiscal stability to significant growth and on controlling crime.

As we noted in the immediate aftermath of the conference, Mr Golding’s speech to delegates at the conference’s public session suggested that the PNP had arrived at, or was close to, a settled policy on the former, based on extricating the economy from its long-standing low-wage, low-technology and, as a result, low-growth, model.

He, among other things, placed strong emphasis on education and training, especially on the STEAM subjects, as well as investment in research and innovation, and promised transformative partnerships between the government and the private sector. Mr Golding said he has begun preparatory discussions with private sector leaders.

Notably, too, Mr Golding’s speech and remarks by his shadow finance minister, Julian Robinson, were in theme and substance very much on the same page, lending to a sense that the opposition party had fully escaped its long period of intellectual muddle.

EMBRYO OF INDUSTRIAL POLICY

Essentially, they presented an embryo of an industrial policy, which, if it were to succeed, would require significant coordination across the government. In that respect, a party entering office with merely a grab bag of ideas, without a clear vision of what it wants to achieve, and the specific policies to underpin that vision, will inevitably spend a lot of time designing its programmes. Given the exigencies of government and the need to attend to immediate crises, big ideas of the kind suggested by Messrs Golding and Robinson usually become sidetracked.

In that regard, it was expected that the PNP would by now be fleshing out the various elements that will have to come together to allow Jamaica to maintain fiscal discipline, while lifting economic growth beyond one or two per cent over the medium to long term. The party’s spokespersons on education, commerce, innovation, agriculture, the environment, and others, would all have to bring strategies to the table that fit into that larger project of economic transformation.

Unfortunately, in the period since the party’s conference nothing offered by the PNP’s shadow ministers suggest that they are aware of a grand strategic mission, or that they enjoy policy clarity. On the hustings in preparation for municipal elections, the PNP’s declarations still echo its expectation of, or hope for, the government implosion.

We are not clear on the skill sets of the young shadow cabinet juniors. But perhaps they should grab the proverbial bulls by the horns and take over what their seniors have, thus far, failed to do.

That might just give voters options and the PNP a chance. But these policies and strategies, in the event that they exist, can’t be presented on the eve of an election with the expectation that voters will make rational choices based on what is on offer. Over to you Mr Golding.