EDITORIAL - After the election, serious work begins

On Monday, 150 candidates were nominated for the December 29 general election, although only 126 of these have realistic chances of winning parliamentary seats.

Those are the ones who were put up by the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Opposition People's National Party (PNP), one of which will form the government. The nominations were conducted in a largely carnival atmosphere. Or, from the perspective of the director of election, Mr Orrette Fisher, "it was an uneventful day". Most Jamaicans will welcome this, marking it as evidence of the continuing maturity of the country's democracy that, on occasion, is marred by intimidation, violence and other excesses, aimed at gaining political advantage for either of the parties. Indeed, they, like us, will hope that the actual voting, even if festive, will be an equally, as Mr Fisher put it, "uneventful day".

But the task to be undertaken by Jamaica's next administration is far from carnival, which, hopefully, is appreciated by Mr Andrew Holness and Mrs Portia Simpson Miller, the leaders, respectively, of the JLP and the PNP. Or, to put the matter bluntly, Jamaica faces a deep fiscal crisis. The national debt at September was $1.6 trillion, having over the past four years risen at around $480 million a day. Our debt is 130 per cent of GDP, putting us in the category of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) European countries, whose fiscal problems, and market scepticism about lending to them, triggered the debt crisis in the Eurozone.

Indeed, Jamaica is on warning from the rating agencies of possible downgrade. Despite the pretence to the contrary, its borrowing agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has collapsed. The Fund has told our Government to put its fiscal house in order and to bring under control a fiscal deficit which, at six per cent of GDP, is presumed to be understated and is an obvious drag on growth and development. Fix the problems - including negotiating a new agreement with the IMF, reorganising the public sector and reforming the pension and tax systems - will not be easy.

Demand courage

Many of the policy prescriptions will be unpopular. They are unlikely to find favour with the political old guard. It will demand courage of Mr Holness and Mrs Simpson Miller, whichever one is the PM, assuming either is persuaded of the depth of the crisis, to stare down the dinosaurs and to fashion a Cabinet with bright and energetic people, who understand the priorities and have the skills to help in the formulation and management of policies that balance debt, inflation, fiscal deficit and the need for growth. But this is not only the job of the leader.

Critical, too, will be the public-sector technocrats, who must have the skills to offer coherent policy advice to the political executive and manage the implementation of programmes that, if not finely synchronised, are easily discordant.

If these skills do not now exist in the public sector, the administration, of whichever party, should recruit them from the private sector, the diaspora or from among non-nationals. The Government must not constrain itself with political hubris, jingoism or petty nationalism. Indeed, as important as formulating and implementing economic policy will be the job of marshalling public support for difficult programmes. This means, too, meaningful engagement of the Opposition.