EDITORIAL - Time for specifics, Dr Phillips

Dr Peter Phillips, who is in charge of the People's National Party's (PNP) election campaign, will today brief journalists in his other, and more substantive, capacity: the party's shadow minister on finance, planning and the public service.

It is an opportunity for the PNP to finally, and seriously, begin to address what should be the main issue of this campaign, that is, the state of the economy and the Opposition's plans to reverse Jamaica's fiscal crisis, generate growth and create jobs.

So far, the PNP has concentrated its campaign primarily on claims about the poor governance of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), of which the administration's embarrassingly inept handling of the Christopher Coke extradition affair, and more recently, the unaccountable, sieve-like management of the multibillion-dollar Jamaica Development Infrastructure Project (JDIP) are emblematic.

These failures cost Bruce Golding his leadership of the JLP and Government and Mike Henry his seat in the Cabinet as transport and works minister. Mr Golding's successor, the youthful Andrew Holness, has not completely escaped the taint of these and other issues.

Show us alternatives

This newspaper believes that governance issues are important and should be well ventilated before the electorate. But it is not enough for the Opposition to seek to ride these issues, and what it deems to have been poor economic management by the Golding/Holness administrations, without showing its alternatives. Or, showing them in good time so that they can be digested and robustly debated. This cannot await the publication of a manifesto.

Jamaica's economic situation is not in dispute. Our debt, at more than 130 per cent of GDP, is unsustainable. After servicing that debt, what the Government has left over is enough to meet merely two-thirds of public-sector salaries. And wage obligations do not include pensions.

We also know that the economy declined for 13 consecutive quarters, that the recent sign of growth is laboured and could falter, and that the country has for a year had a stalled standby agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which both the Fund and the Government pretend is still operational.

It is clear that whichever party forms the administration, it will have to undertake the reform of the public sector, including cutting jobs, raising the age at which people go on pension, and have government workers contribute to their pensions. The tax system will also have to be reformed to collect more, especially from people who have escaped the net.

Bobbing and weaving

Unfortunately, while the parties appear to accept these realities, they have been glib in their articulation, avoiding specifics. The PNP has been worse.

Even though Mr Holness has sent mixed messages, with his declaration that "every little thing will be all right", he has acknowledged that there is "medicine" to be taken. At least, voters have before them the performance of the current administration over the past four years and can assume a trajectory.

The PNP has played an odd game of holding its cards - assuming it has any - close to its chest, saying, up to now, that it will reveal them with its manifesto. Incredibly, it has even refused to discuss its shadowy job plan, the outlines of which it unveiled in September, even though substantial elements of the plan would be no charge to the Budget and seemingly not market-distorting. Ludicrously, the party says it fears its ideas will be stolen.

Dr Phillips will, hopefully, be more mature.