The year is ending very much as it began. Like most years in Jamaica have ended for a very long time. With concerns over the state of the economy and high levels of crime and debate about how to fix the problems.

There was another familiar ring heading towards the close of 2004: Government officials seeking to put the best face on things.

So in a speech at a luncheon of the leadership of Region Six of his ruling People’s National Party (PNP), Prime Minister P J Patterson was conceding that it was a tough economic year but suggesting that the worst may be over.

“We are weathering the storm and we have been servicing our debts,” Patterson said in the December 20 speech.

The prime minister also praised initiatives by the private sector and trade unions, which could ease the burden of high interest rates and a big wage bill faced by his administration and, hopefully, create the environment for investment and economic growth.

These groups, Patterson said, were attempting to help the government to “build a partnership for growth and prosperity” and, in fact, he argued that a resurgent tourism industry was likely to be the catalyst for sustained growth in the island.

At year end, government officials were maintaining the projection of growth into the end of the fiscal year, of perhaps two per cent, down on the three per cent expected at the start of the year, but a substantial positive in a country where economic growth has been stagnant or, at best, anaemic.

Like Patterson, Peter Phillips, sought to assuage Jamaicans about their other big matter of concern – crime and security.

Phillips, the national security minister, said that murders, of which there were 1,041 in 2002, were down 10 per cent, while robberies had fallen by 22 per cent, break-ins by 22 per cent and larceny by 28 per cent. Rape and carnal abuse were up nearly 30 per cent.

Phillips, in a radio and television broadcast agreed the incidence of crime in Jamaica, especially murder, remained “unacceptably high”.

“However, what I can say is that the trend is in the right direction despite the challenges and occasional setbacks,” he said.

If the economy and crime demanded attention towards yearend, it was another of the perennials that grabbed the public at the start of 2003 and was the source of not a little discomfort for the finance minister, Dr Omar Davies. The issue was economics overlaid with politics. In a sense, though, these matters flowed directly from the big event of the year before.

Having recovered from months of trailing the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in public opinion surveys, the PNP, in October 2002, won a fourth consecutive term in government. But the euphoria of the close victory had hardly subsided before Dr Davies was revealing that he was carrying a public sector deficit of eight per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), nearly twice the level projected at the start of the year.

The signals were clear that the economic environment would be difficult in the New Year and the budget Dr Davies would deliver the following April would have to carry a substantial tax package or big cuts in public expenditure, or more than a bit of both, if he was to reduce the deficit and restore the confidence of the foreign money markets in Jamaica.

But if the government had hoped for a relatively painless approach to a national consensus on any tough decision, it did not bargain on indiscretion and loose talk from Dr Davies himself.

At a February conference of the PNP’s North West St Andrew constituency party, the finance minister candidly told party supporters that in the lead-up to the elections and with the need to repair infrastructure in the face of flood damage, he still went ahead with other major projects despite being aware of the likely impact on the deficit.

“Comrades, if this was another time probably I would hold back on certain things and deal (only) with the flood damage,” Davies told the group. “I am not making any apologies. No government anywhere fighting an election campaign (is) going (to) help the Opposition by cutting back on critical projects.”

It took days for Davies’ remarks to seep out, but when a tape recording of his statement was broadcast on Power 106 FM radio it caused a furore and deeply embarrassed both the government and ruling party.

The government used its parliamentary majority to defeat an Opposition censure motion against Dr Davies, but only after a long, and often bruising debate.

It took several statements by PNP and government officials, a published statement of regret by the finance minister and a direct apology to private sector leaders at a meeting to discuss the problems in the economy, to quell the anger over Davies’ remarks.

The December revelations of the extent of the fiscal deficit had begun to put pressure on the value of the Jamaican dollar. From an exchange rate of just under J$50 for US$1, it had by February slipped to over J$53 to US$1. The situation was not helped by the cloud that hung over Dr Davies.

In March the slide of the local currency took off with a vengeance, driven largely, both government and private sector officials agreed, by speculation.

For the previous two quarters, they pointed out, the economy had grown at an average three per cent, and most other fundamentals were not, the administration said, terribly out of whack. Although, by now it was becoming clear that the rating agencies, Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s were preparing to downgrade Jamaica’s sovereign instruments.

By mid May the Jamaican dollar was trading, on a weighted average basis, at up to J$67 to the US dollar and in some cases individual institutions sold upwards of J$72 for US$1.

With private sector leaders saying that the instability in the markets was making it difficult for them to plan, and social sector spokespersons warning of the human cost of the slide and the unrest it could ignite, the government in the second half of March stepped in.

In a May 19 broadcast, Patterson announced that the central bank would begin to use some of its US$1.4 billion in reserves to intervene in the market. He appealed to Jamaican patriotism, but warned of the determination of his administration to halt the slide of the currency. “In the process, speculators will get hurt,” he said.

In short order there was a strong revaluation of the Jamaican dollar, to around J$59 to US$1. By year-end the rate was around J$60 to US$1.

This, though, was not to be the end of the government’s economic troubles. Dr Davies had to deliver a budget in April that would have to address the deficit, win the confidence of the foreign and local markets and create opportunities for growth.

What the finance minister eventually delivered was a $261 billion spending package to which he attached a $14.8 billion tax package, to help shut a financing gap and to meet his target of a deficit of between five and six per cent of GDP.

The finance minister projected to raise the bulk of the additional tax – $8.2 billion or 55 per cent – from a widening of the net for the 15 per cent general consumption tax and $3.2 billion from a four per cent levy on imports. The levy, officially, would be treated as a payment against corporate income tax.

The private sector balked at the levy proposal saying that it would hurt businesses and eventually compromised with an agreement for a two per cent user fee on imports – a decision that cost the then president of the Jamaica

Manufacturers’ Association (JMA) Clarencec Clarke his job when members revolted claiming that he signed on without their endorsement.

Several interest groups also questioned other elements of Davies’ tax package causing the minister to make various adjustments, including removing GCT from some products and the tax on lottery winnings because sales declined.

It is widely believed that the February statement by the finance minister and the tax package in April contributed to the PNP’s defeat in the local government elections in June, when it retained only one, Westmoreland, of the 13 local parish councils. One council, Clarendon, was tied.

This victory for the Jamaica Labour Party coming only seven months after its defeat in the national elections was hailed as a continuation of the rejuvenation of the JLP. “I asked the people to send a message (to the PNP),” said JLP leader Edward Seaga on the night of the June poll. “They sent a powerful message.”

As the year moved towards a close Seaga and Davies were back on centre stage, seemingly in separate struggles for their credibility.

In the case of Seaga, his characterisation as an authoritarian leader intent on maintaining a firm grip on the party appeared to be again on the rise and there were fears that the JLP might have been heading into another round of convulsive divisiveness.

It started when it was announced that James Robertson and Dr Horace Chang would challenge two strong Seaga loyalists for deputy leader positions in the party. Seaga made clear he would prefer that there be no election at the party conference in November, saying that an election could be disruptive at a time when the JLP should be consolidating its gains.

Chang and Robertson nonetheless defied Seaga but only minutes before the vote, Seaga, in an address to delegates claimed that Robertson was attempting to buy his way to the job with a well-funded campaign. He later also claimed that “tainted money’ had reached Robertson’s campaign.

He later retreated in the face of angry responses by some of the JLP’s long-time financial backers who funded Robertson’s campaign and hints of legal action by the chairman of Robertson’s finance committee, Daryl Vaz. In a bad political episode for the JLP leader, several of the candidates he supported for top party positions lost to people considered to be on the JLP reform wing.

As if these internal political setbacks were not bad enough, Seaga in December lost a slander case against former deputy police commissioner, Leslie Harper, who he was ordered to pay $3.5 million plus costs, for remarks he made at a public rally in 1996. Hard on the heels of the Harper ruling, Seaga agreed to apologise in the press and broadcast media to controversial businessman Kenneth “Skeng Don” Black, who he two years ago claimed to be illiterate.

Davies was facing difficulties of another, but also serious, kind at year-end.

He was reporting a higher revenue in-take, but the growth was not fast enough to match the hike in expenditure and the minister was facing the prospect of busting the deficit targets.

The upshot: he slashed the capital budget by a third and public sector bosses were told to place a freeze on hirings and promotions and to generally tighten their management. At the same time, many government agencies were running arrears with suppliers.

However, there were signs that public sector trade unions were willing to moderate wage demands and extend the period for their wages to catch up with those of their private sector counterparts in exchange for a government undertaking that there would not be public sector job cuts.

The effect would be to slow down the expansion in the government’s $55 billion wage bill, which has been rising at a rate of 15 per cent a year.

At the same time private sector groups, concerned about the state of the economy, held informal meetings, hoping to arrive, eventually, at a social partnership agreement which will help to deliver growth. Among their proposed initiative is for the conversion of some of the government’s high-cost domestic debt to cheaper US-dollar denominated instruments. The result would be to ease the crunch that debt servicing, which accounts for over 60 per cent of government spending, has on the budget. But more importantly, it would, the argument goes, help create the environment for a broad lowering of interest rates.

Economics and politics consume Jamaicans. But so does fear of crime in a country with one of the world’s highest murder rates. And for most of the year in any discussion or debate about crime or response to crime in Jamaica one personality loomed large: Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams, a tough, colourful and talkative policeman who often finds himself in the centre of controversy.

Faced with a crime wave in 2000 and calls from the public to do something urgently, the government caused a new squad to be established in the police force, called the Crime Management Unit (CMU), to be headed by Adams, who had a reputation of being willing to take on bad men. But the CMU was soon embroiled in a series of controversial incidents and human rights groups often accused the squad of involvement in extra-judicial shootings.

The incident at Braeton, St Catherine in early 2002, when seven youngsters were killed in an alleged gunfight with the police was among the cases that Adams’ critics latched onto and with the help of international groups, such as Amnesty International pressed to have judicially ventilated. They insisted that there was no shoot-out.

In October 2002 a coroner’s inquest ruled in a split vote of 10 to four, that no one was criminally responsible for the deaths of the youngsters at Braeton. In circumstances of a split decision by a coroner’s jury, the Director of Public Prosecutions can decide whether someone is to be charged.

Even as the DPP, Kent Pantry, was contemplating his decision, Adams’ group was to be involved in another highly controversial incident: the killing of four persons, including two women, at a house in Crawle, Clarendon in May.

The police claimed they came under fire while in search of gunmen. In the shoot-out that followed, the persons in the house from which the attack came were killed.

However, several persons questioned the police’s version of the incident and under strong pressure from critics who said there would be a cover-up, the police chief Francis Forbes announced that he had invited Scotland Yard to be involved in the investigation.

Adams and others in his team were taken off front-line duty while the incident was investigated. Adams, however, said he would refuse to co-operate with Scotland Yard investigators, arguing that there were competent police in Jamaica.

By this time Forbes and others in the government had apparently become fed-up with the controversies that had dogged the CMU and decided to disband the squad and give Adams a job with the weighty title of co-ordinator of the national crime initiative, which most people felt amounted to a thumb- twiddling exercise.

Having lost his court challenges to the transfer – which he first read about in the press – Adams has been turning up for work with relatively little to do. In November, six of the policemen who were involved in the Braeton incident were indicted for murder, but Adams himself was not charged.

Ballistic reports showed that his gun was not fired. The DPP is yet to rule on the Crawle incident.