EDITORIAL - And now Ed Bartlett

The end of Ed Bartlett's pouting and his assumption of the shadow foreign minister's job sounds to us like more good news for the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). At least, politically.

He follows defeated leadership challenger Audley Shaw back to the Opposition's front benches, suggesting that the party is healing after the bitterness of that leadership race.

In its aftermath, Messrs Shaw and Bartlett not only turned down shadow Cabinet posts, but did so in a manner calculated to embarrass the JLP's leader, Andrew Holness.

Officially, Mr Bartlett's peeve was over his dissatisfaction at being removed from the tourism portfolio to the one that he has finally accepted.

If, indeed, the JLP is at last pulling itself together and Mr Holness can proceed without having to constantly glance over his shoulders, the party can begin the on-the-ground political work to give it a good chance in the elections due in three years' time. In this regard, Mr Bartlett, with his more-than-reasonable political skills, has a contribution to make.

But Jamaicans, increasingly, require more than raw politics from parties in opposition that would become the government. They insist, too, on being shown credible policies.

Much policy work for JLP

As we have noted before, the JLP has much policy work to do. And not just on the economy - an area to which we previously suggested to Mr Holness he needs to pay attention, and which was reinforced by the shadow Cabinet's open session this week.

Indeed, it is worth repeating our recommendation that the JLP urgently pull together an economic team, in which it should include academic and practical economists, people experienced in public-policy management and comfortable with enterprise.

While the economy demands, perhaps, the most immediate and focused attention, as Mr Holness would be aware, governments are engaged in a much broader range of endeavours, for which an Opposition must prepare. The management of foreign policy is among them, for which Mr Bartlett now has responsibility.

On the face of it, the new shadow foreign minister has a way to go up the learning curve, if we are to judge by his first public statement relating to the portfolio. Although he sought to frame it as a large matter of principle, Mr Bartlett swam in a minor matter of emotive politics, hoping for visceral traction.

PM's travels

For the past several months, the Opposition has made heavy weather of the prime minister's foreign travels - and ministerial travel generally - insinuating that these are mostly unnecessary, expensive jaunts. So, the PM had barely returned from the summit in Havana of the Community of Latin American States before Mr Bartlett was demanding an accounting of a trip and implying that he used to do just that during his four years as tourism minister, although the supporting public evidence is not immediately apparent.

While this newspaper believes in transparency in the management of public affairs, we are also aware that foreign policy cannot be conducted, in all its minutiae, in public fora. Further, the gains of diplomatic engagement are not always counted in dollars and cents, or in ratios of immediate returns to the cost of a trip. Four decades of principled investment by Jamaica, across several administrations, in its relations with China, is a prime example. In that respect, we look forward to Mr Bartlett's next public pronouncement for a cogent statement on his foreign-policy objectives, including relations with Jamaica's regional partners.

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.