Mop up JLP with enquiry, Holness

Daniel Thwaites, Contributor

Are the sins of the fathers to be visited upon the son? Does Mr Golding's outrageously inept governance condemn his successor, Mr Holness? Is it the mark of Cain on his leadership, the original sin of his incumbency? Only if he chooses it.

Dudus put Holness in his current position. Or, to put it more charitably, the Dudus mess allowed Holness to ascend to leadership. But now he has an unrivalled opportunity to use it as the leader of a new generation that's not just a slightly newer model of the old brand, yesterday's dinner warmed over, or even last week's stale salad.

The Sunday Gleaner editorial of two weeks ago noted that "the JLP's failure to articulate an intellectually defensible position on the Tivoli Gardens issue is just a manifestation of, or a metaphor for, the party's crisis of ideas - and leadership". Since then, Holness and the JLP have been flip-flopping all over the place.

Originally, Holness said the JLP would not participate, then he retreated to not having made up his mind. Mr Chang said it would be a waste of time. Mr Chuck has one position, Desmond McKenzie has a different one every day. At last Wednesday's Gleaner Editors' Forum, Holness made up his mind (for now) that the JLP have given the green light to take part in the enquiry.

This is no small matter. At least 76 people were killed, more than in any other single event since the Morant Bay Rebellion. That is a lot of blood.

Then there was no blunting Bunting and Lloyd D'Aguilar on the Biography Channel's America's Most Evil: The Kingston Kingpin, which explored Dudus' extradition. These are the angry neighbours disturbing the JLP's 70th birthday party, locking off the sound system and calling the cops.

The challenge for Holness is that Bunting's statements seem perfectly true. If anyone is foolish enough to bring a defamation suit, that would be another carnival of revelations and reminders of just how far the previous administration sank and stank.

Holness is the first of the post-Independence generation - my generation - to be in a position to systematically affect national events. There are others loping around the corridors of power, but none remotely in his position. The others are ultimately mere ornamentation to the generation that has been firmly in the seat of power since Michael Manley appointed a precociously young Cabinet in the 1970s.

It was expected that the JLP leadership would react negatively to a Tivoli enquiry. The Manatt enquiry didn't go so well for them, and Holness is, so far, playing depressingly according to the script. Despite all this, I want to believe his heart is in the right place.

One hopes he will take the enquiry as a perfect format to catapult the JLP beyond the 'Tivolisation' that crept upon it and overtook it for the past few decades.

I want to suggest a completely counterintuitive approach to Mr Holness: Confound your critics and embrace the Tivoli enquiry. The partisan sting will only be lessened.

What have you got to lose? On the current trajectory, the very probable result will be a great battering and bruising of the JLP. We all expect a drumbeat of negative discoveries about the creation, handling, and subsequent attempts to cover up and distract from the disaster.

For one thing, he could strengthen himself in his own party. At his elevation in late 2011, part of the story was that he was peripheral to the decision-making regarding Dudus. The enquiry is the broom and dustbin, mop and bucket, Jeyes, bleach, and Dettol that he has (hopefully) been waiting for. Tivoli is Seaga's and Golding's mess. Holness needn't adopt it and thereby own it.

I 'HEART' IMF

I sometimes think Jamaica has one political party with two left wings. Each tries to outstrip the other with promises of non-existent government largesse.

This odd political landscape occurred to me when The Gleaner's ever-topical digjamaica.com blog featured an interesting picture from the Rodney Riots, with students breaking through a police cordon on October 16, 1968.

After Independence itself, the Rodney Riots were the defining event for the generation of leaders that still dominates Jamaican political life. An oppressive state deployed its resources against 'the people' and against Black Power and against all that was good and righteous in the world. Very well.

But since then, the rioters took control of the government, the academy, and the society more generally. They are now The Establishment, and have been for a long time. They've governed riotously.

This is why I 'heart' the IMF agreement. The IMF, in fiscal policy, is doing for us the favour that the US Department of Justice did in law enforcement by requesting the extradition of Dudus.

It has taken an outside source to demand reasonable deficits, limited debt exposure, and curtailed spending. That said, a key piece of recent bad news is that the Government is shelving pension reform till 2016. That date, I'm sure, has nothing at all to do with the next election.

The PNP will have a difficult time electorally if it abides by the IMF obligations. But if it fails with the IMF, it will have an impossible time. So they can choose between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Back in the old days, it was the JLP that championed fiscal responsibility and keeping the country's books in order. That was a long time ago now.

This was the subtext of dark comicality when the JLP delivered tuition-free education and non-contributory health services even as the worldwide recession took root and the economy spiralled downward. Not least among the ironies was that the PNP had been out-pee-en-peed: 'How can the JLP be promising free stuff that the country can't pay for? That's OUR move in this chess game!"

But so it went. Overall, the Golding administration will be remembered as not only staggeringly reckless with Dudus and national security, but as fiscally disastrous. The attempted buyout of the public sector by granting wage increases after the JDX exercise, and in defiance of the IMF, has to be one of the most brazen breaches of the public interest and trust ever.

The 150 per cent debt-to-GDP ratio isn't something that fell from the sky. It's the result of deliberate policy choices by both parties founded and dominated by unions, and by politicians who promise what they can't deliver, and buckle and sell out the public interest at the first sign of industrial unrest or sectoral discord.

Daniel Thwaites is a partner of Thwaites Law Firm in Jamaica, and Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in New York. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.