Dear Editor,

A media report states that PNP adherents in the Hanover area have been demanding from the government more and better information regarding transactions with the IMF. In response, the parliamentary representative for Eastern Hanover is said to have promised to take up the matter, not with the government, but with the PNP executive. Is this the way to go?

The utterance suggests that the administration may be getting back to practices of the 1970s when the government was more beholden to the PNP's national executive than to parliament, the people and the press. Perhaps instead of calling on the Cabinet for action and information, the media and civil society should be reaching out to the PNP executive.

Michael Manley in his book Struggle in the Periphery did say:

"Governments in power are subject to the laws of inertia as anything else...there were many instances where it was the determination of the party cadres which kept the government on course. It was often they who ensured that the Cabinet had the courage and the determination to act in the face of a cacophony of protest from the conservative press and from the major establishment institutions like the Manufacturers' Association and the Chamber of Commerce..."

Ken Jones

kensjones2002@yahoo.com