EDITORIAL - PNP's reasons weak for avoiding talks

The Opposition may have compelling reasons for staying out of talks towards what, these days, is referred to as a Partnership for Transformation, but was once branded a social contract. But those it served up last week do not pass muster with this newspaper.

Indeed, until we are provided with further and more convincing particulars from the People's National Party (PNP), we conclude that its actions are influenced by a perception that the administration is staggering and that the Opposition's formal re-entry into the talks, without substantive and visible concessions, would be tantamount to throwing the Government a lifeline.

It is political theatre of which Jamaicans will see plenty of over the next year, unless they are asked to vote earlier in the general election.

Unfortunately, members of the Government and the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), with a series of impolitic, if not puerile, actions, are making such grandstanding easy, and without consequence, for the Opposition.

Difficult process

This effort at getting societal stakeholders to coalesce around some broad national principles, and to agree to a set of issues that would be free of the chafing effects of excessive political partisanship, has been a difficult process over more than three decades.

In the 1970s, the PNP's Michael Manley attempted to forge a social contract, but the project foundered on the ideological cleavages of the times.

In the 1990s, P.J. Patterson tried, but the Opposition stayed away. The effort eventually collapsed under the weight of distrust between the private sector and unions.

Early this decade, private leadership revived the initiative. The then Opposition was less than lukewarm, and after the pressures of an immediate crisis subsided, the PNP Government became distracted.

The process was again jump-started by the private sector and civil society, but it was derailed by the Golding administration's clunking and suspicious handling of America's request for the mobster, Christopher Coke. Its re-engagement has been tentative. Last week's signing of a code of conduct would have signalled, at least symbolically, its full return.

However, the Opposition latched on to the fact that it has sent documents that were updated to reflect the current economic situation. It also argued that a big road and infrastructure project is being partisanly implemented.

None of these, we believe, are insurmountable issues. In any event, a social partnership does not mean an end to politics or disagreements over policies and/or programmes and their implementation.

No need for policy shifts

But as Prime Minister Golding noted, even in the cut and thrust of democracy, "we can still find ways to identify those issues that we take out of the heart of adversarial politics". Indeed, some policies need not shift with every new administration.

Mr Golding, however, would be aware that in this process, the greater burden of coaxing and cajoling is with those with the burden of office and, therefore, the immediate ownership of policy. He ought to have understood, too, that especially at this period in the life of a government, an opposition will likely be less than accommodating, and ready to grasp at insults, perceived or real, as reasons for its actions.

But the issues it raised did not reach the level for the Opposition to stay away; it is saying that the Government lacks legitimacy.