EDITORIAL - Just get the economy right, PNP

The People's National Party (PNP) is quite understandably, rightfully even, making a big deal of the 75th anniversary of its formation this year. Its leaders would like the rest of us to join the fuss.

The PNP is the first of mass parties to evolve from the 1930s social uprising in the Commonwealth Caribbean. It served as a template for other parties in the region.

Significantly, too, the PNP has been an integral player in that often bumpy and sporadically meandering journey of Jamaica's democracy, which, happily, remains fundamentally in place. The party has had a major hand in many of the social advances achieved by the Jamaican people. It often speaks eloquently to the notion of being Jamaican and independent.

From these perspectives, the PNP has something to celebrate. But its current leader, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, and her predecessor, P.J. Patterson, should not be surprised if there is no outpour of PNP mania or orange-festooned jubilation among the mass of Jamaicans for the party's platinum jubilee.

And this is not merely because of a "current tendency to discredit" political parties and to deny their role in Jamaica's development, as Mr Patterson seems to believe to be the case.

The sad truth, as Mr Patterson will concede once he seriously reflects on it, is that Jamaica's political parties - not just the PNP - have severely underperformed. They cause Jamaica - as PNP two-time leadership aspirant and current Finance Minister Peter Phillips puts it - to take too many "wrong turns".

Not least of these "wrong turns' was the domestic front Jamaica's parties opened as cold-war proxies, leading to the political bloodletting of the 1970s and the near Balkanisation of communities. Jamaica is yet to fully recover from that misadventure, which nurtured the seeds of what has evolved into today's culture of gangs, extortion and community enforcers.

Perhaps more egregious is Jamaica's poor economic performance, and the hand that the parties, including the PNP, have had in it. In the 50 years of Jamaica's Independence, the PNP has governed 56 per cent of the time, including for nearly 19 continuous years that coincided with a global economic boom.

SEEKING political power

Forty-four years ago when Norman Manley, the PNP's founding leader, was stepping down, the mission of his generation, he declared, was to "win self-government" and political power for the majority of Jamaican. The mission of the next generation was largely to build the country's economic and social foundations.

Over the past four decades, Jamaica has achieved annual average economic growth of less than one per cent, has a debt profile similar to Greece's, has among the world's highest homicide rates, and requires the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund to get its fiscal house in order.

We agree that the PNP must modernise itself, reverting to a party of ideas and high ideals, rather than one that responds to, and ultimately led, the hoof sounds of the herd.

But for now, all Jamaica, we believe, will get with the mood of the jubilee if the Government that the PNP forms were to put together a set of cogent and coherent economic policies, mobilise the country around them, and then competently implement them. That can't be asking too much.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.