Editorial | Tangles in shadow Cabinet

When a party leader shuffles his shadow Cabinet 19 months before a general election – as Mark Golding did at the weekend – an obvious takeaway is that this will be his ministerial team if he were to win the election.

So, what other information or message might be gleaned from the configuration of the Opposition leader’s team?

The first is that, on the face of it, he will oversee a top-heavy government, with respect to the ratio between ministers and back-benchers.

Mr Golding’s shadow Cabinet has 26 members. Even if his People’s National Party (PNP) won all 63 parliamentary seats and the constitutional maximum of four ministers from the Senate were applied, it would mean that at least 35 per cent of members of the House would have ministerial jobs. And, as is the wont of prime ministers, Mr Golding would probably appoint more than a handful of other members as ministers of state and/or parliamentary secretaries.

But barring the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) boycotting the election, it is extremely unlikely, nigh impossible, that the PNP could win all the seats. Indeed, the latest Don Anderson opinion polls in December showed the PNP with a 25 per cent support among voters (53 per cent among those who have made up their minds how they will vote), against 22 per cent for the JLP. Thirty-five per cent of the electorate said they would vote for neither party, while 18 per cent had not made up their minds yet which one would get their ballots.

STATISTICAL DEAD HEAT

Given the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus three per cent, the parties in December were in a statistical dead heat.

Even if the PNP maintained its lead and the majority of the undecided broke for the Opposition, it remains unlikely that it would win a runaway victory. The greater likelihood is that it will be a more evenly matched Parliament, unlike the current one in which the JLP has 78 per cent of the seats.

Should the PNP win, say, 38 seats, it could mean, judging from the size of the shadow Cabinet, that between 59 and 63 per cent of the PNP’s members of parliament would be ministers, assuming that all the portfolio spokespersons slated to contest the election won their seats.

Other than these observations, what else does Mr Golding’s restructuring of his shadow Cabinet say to Jamaicans? Not much. Or, not much with clarity.

For while the Opposition leader grouped the portfolios under supposed thematic headings (transparency and accountable governance, sustainable economic development, social cohesion and empowerment, infrastructure and human amenities) the subject matters, at first blush, seem fragmented, uncoordinated and lacking in coherence.

Take the case of Peter Bunting, formerly the Opposition’s shadow for national security. His portfolio has been renamed citizen security, suggesting a broader perspective of the crime and violence facing Jamaica and what, beyond policing, is required to address the crisis. That is sensible.

But an unexplained appendage to Mr Bunting’s portfolio is productivity. It is unclear the context in which productivity is defined – whether in a narrow economic sense or a broader social framework.

Yet, Andre Haughton was named the spokesman for science, technology, industry and entrepreneurship. Productivity seems a logical and natural fit to this portfolio.

SAME PORTFOLIO

Further, why is there a portfolio for social transformation and social protection (Patricia Sutherland) separate from the one for youth and civic engagement (Gabriella Morris)? These are important and intertwined subjects that ought to be within the same portfolio.

Floyd Morris was appointed spokesman for housing and sustainable living, while Lothan Cousins has the portfolio for land. There is indeed a crisis of land titling in Jamaica that keeps assets/wealth held by the poor locked away, unavailable as collateral. This problem is in need of an urgent, sustained and disciplined intervention, but not a separate portfolio from housing, with which it interlocks.

Further, Ian Hayles oughtn’t to be anywhere near the shadow Cabinet. His position should, properly, be subsumed in the Floyd Morris/Lothan Cousins ministry, as proposed by this newspaper.

The controversies over the Government’s intention to make the city municipality of Portmore its own parish, as well as the proposed configuration of constituency boundaries there, are important matters for debate. However, Fitz Jackson’s talents are deserving of more than that single issue in a shadow Cabinet, notwithstanding that he has made this subject his own.

Perhaps Mr Golding can, and will, offer further and better particulars, with greater clarity, on the configuration of his shadow Cabinet. But he has something more urgent to deliver, policies on which Jamaicans should vote for his party.

He offered teasers, embryonic outlines, at the PNP’s annual conference in September, especially ideas of how to lift Jamaica from a low-growth, low-technology, low-wage economy without undermining the macroeconomic and fiscal stability achieved over the last dozen years. But the embryos have remained just that, embryos.

A manifesto – almost literally – on the eve of the election will not cut it. Policy clarity must come now.