A second spring

Claude Clarke, Contributor

Andrew Holness found himself with an opportunity to lead Jamaica to economic success and he blew it. His inauguration as prime minister generated an outpouring of hope that he might become a new vessel for change from the failed governance that had for too long brought economic decline and social disorder.
But in his short tenure as prime minister, he did not give the many that were anxious to see him succeed a reason to give him a mandate. He failed to convince them that under his stewardship there would be the change they were hoping for. Their disillusionment was reflected in a mass desertion of the December polls.
The poll of 2011 will be remembered as the election from which the Jamaican voter abstained. Faced with the most challenging economic crisis in our history, Jamaica, which under normal circumstances registers an average two-thirds voter turnout, was unable to stir nearly half its electors to make the effort to select a leader. The winning party’s landslide victory was secured with the votes of a lower percentage of the electorate than it obtained when it was voted out of office just four years before.
Hard-core party supporters did what they are viscerally programmed to do; but the decisive independent voter, unconvinced that the PNP had improved since it was rejected in 2007, and having heard nothing from the new JLP leadership to give it hope for anything better, stayed away from the polls. In the circumstances, the historically larger hard core of the PNP prevailed. The election result was, therefore, less of a mandate to the PNP than it was an expression of resignation by the people to their fate.
Shameful betrayal
Earlier, Bruce Golding faced the prospect of a most ignominious rejection by the electorate for his abysmal mismanagement of the Government and his shameful betrayal of the people’s trust in the Dudus-Manatt affair. In what might have been a masterful chess move, he resigned in order to save his party from decimation in the polls. But he was just too narcissistic to handle it in the manner the move required.
As strategically sound a manoeuvre as his resignation was, for it to succeed, his successor needed to be distanced from him and his debilitating baggage. However, Golding was unable to resist the temptation of self-serving bravado, and in so doing left his contaminated fingerprints on the face of his successor.
By couching his resignation as his transfer of power to young leadership, he effectively identified his youthful successor with him and his failed leadership. The tag ‘Baby Bruce’, so effectively used by the PNP to disparage Holness, was inevitable.
Notwithstanding Golding’s mishandled handover, Andrew Holness was the JLP’s best choice, and he might have succeeded. But unlike the ascension of Portia Simpson Miller to the leadership of the PNP six years earlier, Holness’ rise was not anchored in a solid public persona.
Portia had come through a bruising American primary-style selection process, at the end of which her image as an outsider fighting for change on the side of the people was cemented. By contrast, Holness seemed to have been anointed by a discredited Golding and an uninspiring JLP leadership.
The PNP leadership battle left Portia with a rock-solid 78 per cent national favourability rating, which was shaken only by her failure to deliver the promised change during her 18-month tenure. Andrew’s favourability rating briefly shot to 50 per cent, more as an expression of relief at Golding’s departure than a reflection of deep public belief in him, and could not be sustained without a strong message of hope and change.
Apart from being seen as a good portfolio minister, Holness assumed the office of prime minister without an established leadership image. It was left open for the PNP to define him, and it did.
Aided by his many self-inflicted wounds that made him vulnerable to charges of incompetence on economic details and carelessness with the truth, the PNP was able to raise enough questions about his readiness for leadership that independent voters, who were prepared to give him the chance he wanted, were left in doubt. He gave them no reason to vote. And they did not.
Holness never articulated a message that suggested that he understood the need to give the people hope. Nor did he give them a reason to believe that he could bring relief to their economic pain, much of which his administration was held responsible for.
In his 11 weeks at the helm, he never came close to delivering that message. Instead, in an effort to be seen as trustworthy and transparent, he painted prospects of hardship, encapsulated in expressions such as “bitter medicine”, “continuity” and
“stability”, which could only have been interpreted by an austerity-weary electorate as more pain and suffering. Few outside his party’s hard core saw a reason to support him. In the end, the JLP could attract proportionately no more than 80 per cent of the votes it received when it won the election in 2007.
The PNP was able to triumph by a landslide in December without giving the public any reason to believe the party had improved since its rejection in 2007. And Portia Simpson Miller won a second chance to bring the change the people had hoped for when she first assumed the office of prime minister in 2006.
Mrs Simpson Miller’s ‘second spring’ will no doubt give her great satisfaction. It is both a vindication of her people-centred brand of politics and a repudiation of the academic prejudice she has encountered throughout her political life.
But while she basks in her election success, she should not allow herself to be duped into believing that the technical mandate she received is a vote of confidence in the unreformed PNP. The backing of a mere 28 per cent of the electorate does not justify aggrandisement or discounting the hard decisions which must be made to bring economic relief and advancement to the Jamaican people.
One would hope that the prime minister and her economic advisers are aware that among the cruellest impediments to the people’s economic well-being is the burdensome cost that our oversized and wasteful Government imposes on the economy. They should be aware that this burden cannot be lifted unless Government, at all levels, is tightened and sharpened to achieve more value with fewer resources. If this cannot be done at the centre of Government, the Cabinet, it will not be done at all.
It is, therefore, amazing that the prime minister’s first act has been to impede the chance of reducing Government’s burden on the economy by increasing, rather than reducing, the size of the Cabinet.
The prime minister must resist the urge to satisfy political demands and let the economic advancement of the Jamaican people be her only guide. Fundamental to this approach is addressing the harsh reality that costs in both the public and private sectors are far too high in relation to the country’s output, for there to be economic competitiveness and growth. She, therefore, cannot indulge political considerations that result in increasing those costs.
Noother politician
As I have said before, no other politician today is better placed than Portia Simpson Miller to see the country through the economic minefield we face. Her vaunted love for the poor and their support of her could raise the public’s tolerance for the pain we must bear before the corner is turned.
But success will take more than the willingness of the poor to trust Portia. It will require the cooperation and support of the broadest coalition of social and economic interests if Government’s efforts to turn the economy around are to succeed. The prime minister’s call for all hands to report on deck is a good rallying call, but the hard task of building that coalition must begin immediately.
Coalitions of social and economic interests can transcend political divisions and lead the people themselves to cooperate for their common benefit. It is, therefore, fortuitous that the long-delayed rapprochement between the prime minister and Dr Peter Phillips has now been cemented and that he now occupies the important role of minister of finance, planning and the public service.
Phillips’ relationship with the social and economic interests with which Mrs Simpson Miller has not built the strong bond she has with the poor could create a partnership capable of forging the necessary coalition the country needs to face the challenging times ahead. Together, they could do for Jamaica’s economy what the unlikely partnership between former bitter rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has done to restore America’s international standing.
The challenge of economic development, where there are few resources to draw on, is daunting. The most abundant and valuable of the resources available to us is our people. It is the Government’s challenge to motivate and mobilise them to give Jamaica that second chance at success, and Portia a productive second spring.
■ Claude Clarke is a businessman and former minister of trade. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.