Promises, promises

Claude Clarke, Contributor

It shouldn't have shocked me. But it did. After telling a Bahamian acquaintance, who last visited Jamaica at the start of the 1970s, that one Bahamian dollar today is worth 87 Jamaican dollars, he responded, "But a Bahamian dollar was worth only 87 Jamaican cents when I was there."

The realisation that more than 99 per cent of the value of our currency had evaporated was an unexpected dose of reality.

The Bahamas embarked on its independence 11 years after Jamaica, following a common history of British colonial rule. It has had no fewer natural disasters or external challenges. No more natural resources or more resourceful people. It has had a lively two-party democracy with native political leaders every bit as colourful as ours. But our prosperity and economic strength and stability, as measured by the success of our respective currencies, suggest that our countries have taken radically different paths. The Bahamian economy has clearly followed a path that produced relative wealth, economic strength and stability. But for Jamaica, despite the rosy promises of economic prosperity which constantly flow from the lips of our political leaders, economic decline has been our lot.

After four decades, the Bahamian currency has maintained and cemented its strength, while the once-mighty Jamaican dollar has plunged to below one per cent of its earlier value, and by any econometric measure is grossly overvalued. Yet our political leaders continue to promise the moon and we gullibly wait in hope, like pathological gamblers believing our luck will change with the next bet.

Simple, predictable pattern

The pattern is as simple as it is predictable. As every election approaches, we are fed a diet of promises by political parties in the guise of a document called a manifesto. I would not be so cynical as to suggest that these documents are produced with the intention to deceive; but in light of the cumulative negative outcomes experienced over 40 years, one cannot help concluding that we have all been duped.

The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) prevailed in the election of 2007 with the promise of 'jobs, jobs, jobs'. But despite the party's possible good intentions, it turns out it did not have the faintest idea how to create them. The party entered government with no apparent understanding of the economy over which it was about to preside. Nonetheless, it was able to produce a magnificent and colourful manifesto prior to the elections, heralding a new Jamaica of prosperity.

Jamaicans have been played for fools by both parties. The approach of elections and the lure of power inspire the most elaborate and polished of public relations. Glossy documents and flowery rhetoric abound. Political contenders trumpet recycled promises of a better tomorrow as if they believe bombast and bravado have, in themselves, power to determine the future. The really difficult and meaningful task of preparing a real plan for development grounded in the reality of our existing economic and social conditions, realistically assessing the opportunities and pitfalls of the global competitive environment, and generating a strategy to capitalise on true investment and market opportunities are side-stepped and replaced with pretty books and empty promises.

Our political wooers routinely fail to tell us the means by which their promises will be fulfilled. Ends are splendidly isolated from means. Yet the penetrative probing and scrutiny that would be expected from opposing parties to expose any shallowness or contradictions in their opponents' platforms is absent - as if for their mutual protection. The press does no better, as it does not demand detailed explanations about the means by which these promises are to be honoured and the effects that the changes they would require might have on other areas of our economic and social life.

Now the campaign for the next election is upon us, and the PNP has launched its long-awaited Progressive Agenda. Over three years in the making, it is incredible that after such an extended gestation, the document contains no honest review of past economic policies, no coherent ideas to correct past errors, and no clear strategy for success. Instead, we have been served a glossy recital of desirable but unremarkable aims and objectives with no central philosophical compass to provide coherence to them. Responsibility to do this has been shunted to future consultations and a manifesto to come.

Complete disarray

Jamaica faces grave economic and social problems. Our productivity levels, competitiveness and social order are in disarray. The advancement of our economy needs meaningful and effective action by government, leading people to higher levels of order and productive output. The expectation of any Progressive Agenda would, therefore, be to establish a philosophical base on which past performance and present circumstances can be assessed, and on which policies and strategies to chart a clear path towards our development can be mounted.

It is not enough to catalogue objectives and desired outcomes. These, no matter how desirable, must be underpinned by the strategies by which they will be achieved, if they are to be anything but promises.

To be worthy of the name 'progressive', a political agenda must represent a genuine commitment to change for the people's benefit. In Jamaica's case, its first priority must be to get to the heart of the reasons for our persistent failure to develop and grow our economy. The Progressive Agenda tells us nothing about how this will be done.

It does not address the fundamental fact that the high cost of living and doing business in Jamaica underlie our chronic uncompetitiveness. The average Jamaican pays a far greater proportion of his income for energy, for Government and for other services than the citizens of our trading partners. The living costs borne by people are ultimately carried by businesses and leave them less competitive than they otherwise would be.

To bring these costs to competitive levels, radical changes will be needed in the way we conduct our economic affairs.

These changes must be at the centre of any development agenda:

• Our taxation and broader fiscal policies must be changed to keep consumer prices low and encourage investment in, and consumption of, domestic production.
  
• Trade agreements must be revisited to make the markets involved more viable for Jamaican goods and services; and new agreements made on similar bases.
  
• Monetary policy must support the competitiveness of Jamaican production, rather than encourage the consumption of imports.
  
• Policies must be developed to induce private-sector job creation.
  
• The social economy must be rebuilt so that communities of people with common interests can cooperatively develop and expand their own enterprises.
  
• Our social capital with it enormous productive capacity must be restored.

There was no room in the PNP's 44-page Progressive Agenda to deal with these fundamental developmental issues.

When, almost a year ago, following the circulation of the conference version of the Progressive Agenda, I wrote in my Sunday Gleaner article titled 'Where's the beef?', that the document lacked the macroeconomic, strategic, and structural changes needed to transform the economy to one of vitality and competitiveness, and that there was nothing remotely resembling progress in it, I had hoped that the final document would benefit from those constructive observations.

Now that the public-relations version of the Agenda is out, many are still asking, "Where's the beef?"

The Progressive Agenda was presented at a very classy and well-executed function, badly let down by the triteness of the document: a list of good intentions held together by platitudes and clichés arranged to accommodate 'clever' acronyms.

Few question the common commitment of all our political parties to the development of Jamaica and the welfare of our people. What is expected to be different is their approach to achieving these objectives. The PNP's latest offering reveals little in the way of new thinking or different methodology to attaining these objectives. This absence of a new methodology is what is most lacking in the Progressive Agenda.

As an intelligent people with such a long history of unfulfilled promises, we owe it to our children, if not to ourselves, to pose at least one question to the authors of this and all future books of political promises: How?

Can the promised economic outcomes be achieved within the same economic policy framework that has produced chronic labour underproductivity, economic uncompetitiveness, social disorder and low returns on capital invested in production? If yes, explain how. If not, what changes do they propose to achieve the desired results?

Bill Cosby is quoted as saying, "The very first law in advertising [and it seems in politics] is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague." As citizens, it is our job to reject political advertorials parading as policy agendas and demand that those who seek our support tell us exactly how their promises will be delivered.

Claude Clarke is a businessman and former minister of trade. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.