EDITORIAL - When Mr Shaw and Dr Phillips face off

Fortuitously, the People's National Party (PNP) launched its election manifesto on the eve of tonight's debate on the economy between its shadow finance minister, Dr Peter Phillips, and Mr Audley Shaw, who has had the job in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration for the past four years.

For there is no more pressing issue on which Jamaica's voters must pronounce when they go to the polls on December 29 and to which the new government must pay attention immediately on taking office. The cold, stark fact is that the national debt, at $1.6 trillion, or 130 per cent of gross domestic product, as we have been reminded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the rating agencies, is unsustainable.

The critical question that faces those who offer themselves for government, and thus the responsibility for formulating and executing policy, is how they intend to rescue the country from this quagmire of high debt, little or no growth and joblessness. The first part of that answer starts with the courage of whichever party forms the government to take unpopular decisions.

Voters have to be told the truth.

Manifesto declaration

In that regard, note that the first of what the PNP manifesto declares to be 18 steps towards "full people empowerment" is negotiating a borrowing agreement with the IMF. The second is reform of the public sector. Tax and pension reforms, surprisingly, do not make that list of 18, but nonetheless are significant to the party's "plans and strategies" for the macroeconomy and the generation of growth.

The manifesto, essentially, places the PNP's imprimatur on statements previously made by Dr Phillips. The commitment to an IMF agreement, however, is especially significant, given Mr Shaw's recent equivocation on the matter.

The government's standby agreement with the fund has been off the rails for more than a year, and Mr Shaw told a CVM interviewer that he is taking advice on whether to enter a new one - a declaration that would have caused unease among bilateral and multilateral partners and in financial markets, already reticent towards Jamaica.

Definitive position

We expect that Mr Shaw will be asked for a definitive JLP position on the IMF, and that if he eschews a borrowing relationship, what will be his specific fiscal programme going forward. Likewise, we do not believe it too far out, given that his party has had time to think about the issues, for Dr Phillips to provide a fuller articulation of its approach to negotiations with the IMF that will deliver a programme with achievable targets. This, while maintaining a "responsible fiscal stance" and at the same time achieving "critical social problems". More to the point, both men have to be, if necessary, dragged away from anodyne generalities to the immediate starkness of Jamaica's crisis and the fact the recovery will involve pain.

It is important, too, that Mr Shaw be made to explain the spending bacchanalia and the lack of oversight of the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme (JDIP) that occurred under his nose, which we had assumed was supersensitive to any hint of public-sector mismanagement or corruption.

Given existing contractual arrangements, Dr Phillips will have to provide further and better particulars on how a PNP government will wrench an estimated US$75 million from JDIP for its special employment project.