EDITORIAL - When Mr Shaw speaks

A great political strength of Audley Shaw, the shadow finance minister, which serves well when wishing to pump up his party's base, is his possession of a waspish tongue and capacity for contrived irascibility when confronting opponents or critiquing the Government's economic policies.

So we can expect exhibition of this politics of theatre when Mr Shaw responds today to last week's outline to Parliament by Peter Phillips, the finance minister, of how he intends to fund the Government's J$539-billion Budget for the current fiscal year and of the administration's broader economic programme. We can expect Mr Shaw to especially have a field day over Dr Phillips' J$6.7-billion tax package, especially in the face of the finance minister's clear suggestion in January that no new taxes were likely this fiscal year.

It would have served Dr Phillips' credibility well, and made the taxes far more palatable, this newspaper believes, if when it became clear that there was a fiscal gap to be closed, he had been honest and upfront about the inevitability of the package. Instead, he placed himself in an unenviable defensive position from which he now has to extricate himself using more than the logic of economics. Perhaps Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller will have to expend a bit of stored political capital.

But such circumstances notwithstanding, Jamaica deserves from Mr Shaw today much more than populist rhetoric and political theatre - a typecasting which may have cost him the leadership of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) when he challenged Andrew Holness last year. He must demonstrate that he and his party can offer credible alternatives to the tough programme of fiscal and market reform being spearheaded by Dr Phillips under Jamaica's agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

That programme became inevitable when, with an unsustainable debt of near 150 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), the Government found it difficult to pay its current lenders and to attract new ones. Indeed, before Dr Phillips, Mr Shaw, as finance minister during the JLP's four years in office, towards the end of 2011, came to that conclusion and signed an agreement with the IMF. That arrangement quickly collapsed.

In Opposition, Mr Shaw has ridiculed the administration for successfully completing the first year of the programme - including running a primary surplus of 7.5 per cent of GDP - while the value of the Jamaican dollar has slipped (the Government argues that it is more competitive) and growth has been negligible.

On the right track

This newspaper believes that, broadly, the administration is on the right economic track and that the macroeconomic fundamentals it is attempting to put right - including a balanced Budget, less borrowing, a manageable debt, a competitive exchange rate, lower current account deficit - are important precursors to sustainable growth.

But perhaps Mr Shaw has an alternative path, without an agreement with the IMF, which would not result, as happened when his programme with the Fund collapsed, in a turning off of the global financial spigots. We are ready to listen.

Or, more credibly, the JLP, agreeing on the inevitability of the policy fundamentals, has conceived a more nuanced approached to their sequencing and implementation. It is time for parties to end the habit of ridiculing policies merely because they can. That may make it easier to win elections but cause it to be harder to govern. Mr Shaw can start in breaking the cycle.

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.