EDITORIAL - Partnership Agreement no place for PM to escape

Except, tangentially, by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, little was made of the fact that the social partnership agreement was signed on the eve of Emancipation Day. The timing was nonetheless symbolic.

For as Mrs Simpson Miller observed, Jamaica is "enslaved by debt". We owe J$1.8 trillion, or the equivalent to nearly J$670,000 per citizen, or more than 40 per cent of the value of all the goods and services produced in Jamaica annually.

Of all the money - more than J$500 billion - Mrs Simpson Miller's administration plans to spend this fiscal year, 43 per cent will be for servicing the debt. It will consume 55 per cent of the Government's income, including taxes and grants.

When debt servicing and the salaries of public-sector workers, excluding their pensions, are combined, the Government's income will cover roughly 80 per cent of the bill. In other words, the Government will have to borrow to close the gap and to meet other obligations.

What the Partnership Agreement and Jamaica's programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acknowledge is that our Greek-size debt is unsustainable. The cost of its servicing siphons resources from infrastructure and services necessary to support economic growth, as well as makes it unavailable to the private sector for investment.

A challenge to change bad habits

But changing old, bad habits is not easy, especially when that requires taking politically difficult decisions.

The Partnership Agreement and the IMF programme, for instance, demand that Jamaica adhere to stringent deficit targets as part of the strategy to reduce the debt. The Government's pension and tax systems are to be reformed - the former to have civil servants contribute to their retirement plans and the latter to bring more people into the net.

Perhaps 175 years of slavery, 75 years after the 1938 labour riots that marked the birth of Jamaica's modern politics and in the country's 51st year of Independence, the country may, finally, be able to craft a consensus - as Mrs Simpson Miller hopes - to drag the economy out of its crisis.

But as we noted previously, while the consensus approach implied by the Partnership Agreement is good, it does not relieve the Government of its responsibility to lead. Nor is it a pretext for inaction while supposedly awaiting agreement on every element of policy.

Providing that leadership is primarily the responsibility of the prime minister, up to now, she has not exercised that with either ardour or conviction.

It is not enough, this newspaper believes, for Mrs Simpson Miller to say that the finance minister, Dr Peter Phillips, has her support in pushing through the policies. Nor is it sufficient that she make occasional, perfunctory declarations about the toughness of the policies.

Should Mrs Simpson Miller wish to be transformative, she has to assume ownership of the reform agenda and mobilise the country around its implementation. She has unique communications skills and the emotional intelligence for this task.

Up to now, however, the PM appears to have positioned herself to take credit for success, if they happen, but to have blame for failure or hardships fall to others.

We hope that is a misreading of her strategy and that she does not perceive the Partnership Agreement as a place in which to hide.

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