EDITORIAL - Mr Holness' tentative hand to the middle class

Mr Andrew Holness didn't reach soaring heights of vision or inspiration in his inaugural address as prime minister. It was not Bruce Golding's.

The cynics will say that leaves less room for disillusionment. Yet, Mr Holness addressed some nuts-and-bolts issues, which, if he has the courage to seriously tackle, could result in a successful and satisfying premiership.

Of these, the country's debt is most immediate. It is now around 130 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). The cost of servicing that debt is more than all the taxes collected by the Government, and it consumes half the national Budget. The result, as Mr Holness put in his speech, is that "we are caught in a vicious cycle of borrowing".

"... We now borrow in order to repay previous borrowing," the prime minister noted.

The paradox of Jamaica's debt is that it has accomplished the opposite of what it was intended, with greatest pain to the declared main beneficiaries. Countries borrow on the assumption that they invest in physical and social infrastructure which will lead to economic growth. This, in turn, lifts people out of poverty.

In Jamaica's case, with our failure to generate substantial and sustained growth, the debt has become a vastly unsustainable burden, especially on the poor, in whose name and to whose benefit the gangs of Gordon House, the main political parties, profess to exist and on whose behalf, supposedly, they govern.

Escaping this cycle of debt will not be easy. Leading the process is not for the squeamish, as evidenced by Jamaica's currently derailed standby agreement with the International Monetary Fund and associated casualties.

As Mr Holness conceded, a major part of the problem is that, in Jamaica's intensely competitive politics, the Gordon House posse often mislead the electorate with rhetoric, whose ultimate result is more debt. In this process, the parties appeal to their bases, who are led to believe that politics is a game in which the spoils go to the victors. Those Jamaicans who independently think and weigh issues - the middle class - are disenfranchised by the crews.

Perhaps it is that Mr Holness, 39, genuinely intends to break new ground. He said: "Our ... politicians must be brave enough to tell the electorate the truth and be prepared to engage them in robust discussion ... . We must say, unequivocally, there is a limit to borrow and more debt is not a solution to poverty."

The solution, in the short run, will demand an aggressive reform of the public sector and likely include the loss of jobs, if the Government is to meet the wage-to-GDP ratio of nine per cent. It is a reality that is inescapable for Mr Holness' party, or the Opposition, whichever forms the Government after the general election that PM is expected to call soon.

Yet, it is a transformation that neither party can accomplish by being appealing only to their narrow bases. That is a recipe for a narrow mandate and an inability to take the tough decisions required.

For it to be otherwise, the parties have to escape the cocoon of the gangs and embrace the middle class, returning to being the institutions their founders envisioned. Elections can be won exclusively with the base, but effective government and governance is difficult in the absence of the middle class.