EDITORIAL - Strike only a small one for the PNP

THERE CAN be no denying that the People's National Party (PNP) was able to muster a huge crowd for the public session of its annual conference at the National Arena on Sunday.

So, the party may be getting good again at mobilising and firing up its core, helped, no doubt, by the many missteps of Prime Minister Bruce Golding and his ministers. Indeed, PNP spokesmen had a whale of a time poking fun at Mr Golding over the Christopher Coke-Manatt, Phelps & Phillips fiasco.

But, in the end, the most interesting thing the PNP did during its conference season didn't take place during the closed-door session on Saturday, nor in President Portia Simpson Miller's speech at the National Arena. Except, perhaps, the formal announcement of Dr Peter Phillips as its campaign director.

The party reserved its most significant activity for Monday, the publication, for the first time in its 72-year history, of audited accounts.

Contributions

So, the public knows that the PNP started its financial year, which ended on June 30, with a deficit of $1.9 million and that it ended with a surplus of $77,000. And we know, too, that contributions from the salaries of parliamentarians and parish councillors accounted for 65 per cent of all contributions and 44 per cent of total income.

We know something else: that the auditors could not confirm the value of $85 million the PNP had placed on its biggest financial asset, its Old Hope Road headquarters, because the party provided no independent valuation. Nor could the auditors establish the opening balance in the accounts, given that they had no previous audit against which to judge.

Clearly, this was not the way to run an organisation, especially one that aspires to state power and promised prudence, good management and accountability with the people's resources and general affairs.

Publishing the party's account, therefore, is an import step away from operating political parties as shadowy, private clubs to transparent organisations, accountable to the public. Now that the PNP has made the first move, it is to be hoped that the governing Jamaica Labour Party will follow suit.

Integrity

The PNP, in the next annual accounts, should go one further. It has said it would have no problem declaring private contributors to its finances, which would be going further than what the Electoral Commissions of Jamaica (ECJ) has proposed.

If the PNP, like us, believes in the principle, it need not be detained by the ECJ or agreement by the JLP. It can go all the way - another step in its declared aim of standing in favour of integrity in public life.

This, notwithstanding, we congratulate the PNP for the publication of its accounts, without which its weekend carnival offered little of real substance.

For, instance, the PNP's much-talked-about Progressive Agenda remains ... well ... much talked about - ephemeral.

Nor was there anything, from a policy standpoint, substantive in the speeches at the Arena. It is easy to jeer Mr Golding. Anyone, these days, can. Many do.

But if the PNP pretends to government, it has to offer concrete and workable economic and social policies.

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