EDITORIAL - Leadership and the JLP at 70

Andrew Holness has among the most difficult and potentially exciting and transformative jobs in Jamaica. He is leader of the Opposition, a high constitutional position. But more important in the context of this discussion is Mr Holness' leadership of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), which last week marked its 70th anniversary.

The survival of any organisation for that long would, of itself, be significant. But the JLP has done far more than survive. Few institutions could claim its impact on the lives of Jamaicans and the shaping of our country.

For nearly half of its life, the JLP has formed the Government of Jamaica, including 46 per cent of our first 50 years of Independence. The party and its spokesmen, as Mr Holness has been doing recently, will claim that its years in Government coincided with Jamaica's best years: of strong economic growth, moderate crime, and relative social stability.

Indeed, the party has contributed to Jamaica maintaining a functional democracy in which governments are changed at elections that essentially reflect the will of the majority.

Whatever the merits of the party's analysis of its contribution to Jamaica's development, we would be surprised if Mr Holness, and his lieutenants, denied major areas of political dysfunction and how this undermined economic growth and social development. They would, we expect, acknowledge the JLP's contribution thereto.

The JLP is also unlikely to disavow its own proclivity for divisiveness that, for long periods, weakened its electoral prospects. Moreover, the absence of philosophical coherence threatens the party's cohesiveness, particularly during its periods in Opposition.

Grasp the opportunity

These circumstances, paradoxically, are good for Mr Holness. It is for him to grasp the opportunity.

He came to the leadership at the time of the implosion of the JLP government over the Christopher Coke/Tivoli Gardens affair, one of those circumstances that laid bare the dysfunction of our politics, where it too often mingles with criminals and criminality.

Importantly, Mr Holness is young, and perhaps deft enough not to have been tainted by the old order of politics. His challenge, if he is capable, is to withdraw the JLP from these relationships, including being beholden to political garrisons.

Mr Holness, in this regard, must be willing to turn his face firmly against those who may be at the centre of the JLP who cultivate such associations and the hard men and enforcers who may circulate on its periphery.

At the same time, he must articulate clearly what the JLP is and what it stands for. In other words, there ought to be a philosophy around which the party coalesces, rather than, as it appears, disparate groups that find common cause at election time.

This, if achieved, would be good for the JLP. Coincidentally, it would also be good for Mr Holness, who, unlike the party's founder, Alexander Bustamante, or Edward Seaga, its longest-serving leader, does not possess the force of character or combative will to impose his authority on the party. His most likely route to success is ensuring the JLP is systemic.

Mr Holness also has to entertain big, transformative ideas for Jamaica's development. For he has the time and luxury of Opposition. In this respect, he must be transparent about the review into the party's electoral defeat, which the public still awaits, while engaging policy commissions to work on those big ideas.

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