MANDEVILLE, Manchester – She may be charming and well liked but opposition spokesman on finance Audley Shaw says prime minister designate Portia Simpson Miller must share responsibility for what he calls the “dismal and failed” performance of the ruling People’s National Party.

While insisting that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) would not be “attacking” Simpson Miller, Shaw made it clear to a meeting of the JLP’s youth arm, G2K, on the campus of the Northern Caribbean University (NCU) last Thursday that the JLP would require her to answer for the inadequacies of the P J Patterson-led government which has held power since 1989.

“.The Honourable Portia Simpson Miller has been a member of this government for the past 17 years under the Westminster model (and) the principle of collective responsibility whereby if you are in a Cabinet and you feel that you cannot abide by how the country is being run or the policies of the government, then the honourable thing to do is to resign. but Mrs Simpson Miller did not resign. She has been a part of it, she has been a part of what has been happening,” Shaw said.

He claimed that the ruling party was attempting to suggest that Simpson Miller would bring “magic” to the leadership of the country. But, said he, it amounted to “a new hoax” to be played on the Jamaican people.

In fact, he said laughingly, while many people including himself liked Simpson Miller there would be very little different about the new government since it would be the “same old rickety bus” with Finance Minister Omar Davies as “conductor”.

The hope of deceiving the voting population would be the main reason for what he predicted would be an early national parliamentary election. This, “because they know that if they drag the election through until next year” the JLP would expose the government, even under its new leadership as “clueless and totally impotent” in dealing with the nation’s problems, Shaw said.

The 60 year-old Simpson Miller who won the February 25, internal PNP poll for presidency of the party will assume the job of prime minister on March 30, replacing Patterson who is resigning after leading party and government since taking over from the late Michael Manley in 1992.

There has been widespread speculation that Simpson Miller will call an early election in an attempt to take full advantage of her perceived popularity and also to quickly establish her “own mandate”. Under the constitution, the next national parliamentary election is not compulsory until next year when the five-year term ends but can be called at any time.

In pinpointing the “failings” of the Patterson administration Shaw, the member of parliament for North East Manchester and chairman of parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, was severely critical of Davies. Under the finance minister’s stewardship, he claimed, the “indigenous financial sector had collapsed” and the banking and insurance sector was now mostly foreign-owned with much of the country’s wealth being “repatriated”.

Additionally, said Shaw, the government’s policy of maintaining high interest rates had devastated the economy and “destroyed” the manufacturing sector, leading to the closure of 40 factories and loss of jobs for 27,000 people “in the Spanish Town area alone”. The policy had nurtured national indebtedness to the point where 70 per cent of the country’s earnings was now being used to pay debt, he argued.

By a process of “connectivity” the government’s economic policies had fuelled the country’s many social problems including violent crime and unemployment which Shaw argued was in excess of 30 per cent when all those of working age were considered.

In the build up to the elections, Shaw told the young party faithful, the JLP would be doing its utmost to explain to the Jamaican people that the party was “a very viable alternative” with a proud record of economic management in the 1960s and 1980s.