EDITORIAL - Dr Phillips under the spotlight

Dr Peter Phillips, the shadow minister of finance and the public service, will today hold his first substantive press conference since being assigned the portfolio in Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller's shuffle of her spokespersons' council two months ago.

We will watch Dr Phillips' performance closely, for it should help the public not only to interpret his own stance on key issues, but the evolution of the economic thinking of the People's National Party (PNP) in the four years since it lost power. And just as important, today's session will also signal how the Opposition intends to approach critical issues as the campaign gets into gear for next year's general election.

In a sense, Dr Phillips' first public outing in the finance portfolio can be read as one with the launch in a week's time of the PNP's long-gestating policy platform, the airily named Progressive Agenda.

Dr Phillips can choose the frothy path, having been gifted the opportunity by the finance minister, Mr Audley Shaw. If he does, he will concentrate mainly on highlighting the minister's prevarication and obfuscation over the status of Jamaica's standby agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and whether the administration failed the economic performance tests for last December, and March 2011.

Mr Shaw says Jamaica did not fail the tests because the reviews were never done - although at March at least one key quantitative target, the primary surplus, was below the projected level.

However, the Budget is being restructured and negotiations are ongoing with the Fund over the Government's medium-term, to 2015, economic programme.

In the meantime, the Government behaves with incognisance, contorts, vacillates and shilly-shallies over whether what will be concluded will be within the frame of the existing agreement, whether the accord will be adjusted, or if a new one will have to be negotiated. Or simply, does Jamaica now have an IMF agreement in place?

Come to table with solutions

Of course, these are legitimate issues for Dr Phillips to broach today, as part of his, and the PNP's, attempt to highlight the inconsistencies in Minister Shaw's positions, and to demand clarity on the IMF arrangements.

However, Dr Phillips and the PNP must be aware - or they should become so - that any such political critique, in the absence of more, will not convince voters of the PNP's possession of credible economic policies and programmes.

In the first place, Dr Phillips has to assure people that, unlike perceptions of the Progressive Agenda, which is ephemeral, the PNP has real and substantive economic policies.

It is important, too, that Dr Phillips open a debate on why he, and his party, believe that their policies will be of any greater efficacy than when the PNP previously formed the government. In other words, we expect to see a strategy for sustained economic growth and job creation in a hostile global environment.

This approach requires, for instance, an analysis of the potential of the US fiscal problem, its debt downgrade, the impact of Washington's political gridlock and the debt crisis, and how these will influence policy formulation and execution in Jamaica.

Being merely glib and holding up a glittering bag of vacuity won't do.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.