EDITORIAL - New Year strategy for the PM

WE DO not know if Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has had a chance to consider our suggestion of a week ago regarding her New Year resolutions, assuming that she's into that sort of thing.

But if the PM doesn't do the traditional resolution thing, we expect that as a leader she sets goals and targets - things that she wants to accomplish within a specific time frame. We suspect that she has personal ambitions, among which is to be regarded by history to have been a good prime minister. Such a legacy will depend on whether Mrs Simpson Miller leaves Jamaica in better shape than when she took office, or clearly on a path to being so.

On Jamaica's current trajectory few, if anyone, would make these claims for the country, or Mrs Simpson Miller's legacy. But she does have an opportunity, should she have the courage to grasp it.She, however, has to exculpate herself from accustomed political constraints and shift tact on two critical fronts.

First, Mrs Simpson Miller has to be prepared to spend some of her political capital, which she has in plenitude, but which is in danger of a consumptive decline for want of use, or misapplication.

Jamaica's economy has been in bad shape for a long time, dragged down by an unsustainable debt that is a Greek-style 140 per cent of GDP. Servicing that debt consumes more than half the Government's annual budget. What is left is insufficient to cover other obligations, such as paying public-sector employees and maintaining infrastructure. There has to be a radical overhaul of the way the Government functions: the wage bill as a proportion of natural output has to decline; civil servants have to contribute more to their pensions; tax collection has to be more efficient; the state has to become a better enabler of enterprise.

These are some the issues around which the Government is negotiating a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund. But they are politically difficult policies to implement and demand strong will. Success has to be built on national consensus. Jamaicans must be aware, and buy into the fact that we have limited room within which to manoeuvre.

Communicate with integrity

No one in the Government, or in politics generally, has the capacity of Mrs Simpson Miller to communicate that message, with integrity, to Jamaicans. Yet, we sense reluctance on the part of the PM - a seeming unwillingness to be the perceived bearer of bad news. If that is true, the PM is failing to appreciate that the price of inaction is that things will get worse. And in the final analysis it is not only individual ministers, but the entire administration, of which she is the leader, will have failed. She will not escape culpability.

Despite her own capacities, Mrs Simpson Miller must have the best team possible around her to ensure her success. Her current team does not give her that chance. Names such as Pickersgill, Clarke, Kellier, Nicholson, Falconer, Neita-Headley, Arscott, Fagan and Azan could easily depart the administration without notice and with the added symbolic value of a government that is tightening.

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