‘Woman time now’ was a popular sentiment in Jamaica after Saturday, February 25, 2006. That was the day that, in front of hundreds of People’s National Party (PNP) delegates and supporters at PNP headquarters in Kingston, then party president and Prime Minister P J Patterson announced his successor.

She was Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller, a fierce grassroots campaigner, who had been in representational politics for more than 30 years. With her campaign theme song, Shaggy’s Strength of a Woman heralding her presence on stage, Simpson Miller pledged her undying love for Jamaica’s poor, from whence she had come.

One month later, on Thursday, March 30, she was sworn in as Jamaica’s first female prime minister, with unparalleled popularity. History had been made and many Jamaicans felt their time had arrived in tandem with hers.

But Simpson Miller’s road to the presidency of the ruling party and, by extension, head of the Government, was not smooth. The campaign was deeply divisive and bitter as her intellect was questioned by then Foreign Minister K D Knight, one of several Cabinet ministers who had thrown his support behind Dr Peter Phillips, the national security minister and a vice president of the PNP.

Although the campaign teams of the other presidential candidates – Dr Omar Davies and Dr Karl Blythe – did not engage in Knight’s humiliation of Simpson Miller, the questioning of her ability to think and make decisions, throughout the campaign, caused “great rift” in the party, argues Charlene Sharpe Pryce, head of History, Geography and Social Sciences at Northern Caribbean University.

But when Simpson Miller took the stage that Saturday evening in February 2006, she vowed to heal the wounds inside the party.

A year later, Sharpe Pryce commends Simpson Miller’s sustained effort at rebuilding.

“I think she would’ve done a very good job in trying to eliminate the tension. She kept a number of her opponents in the Cabinet, which was wise and strategic and gave the view that she had extended the olive branch… and decided to place the hurt and division behind her,” Sharpe Pryce said.

The responses of political analysts from whom the Sunday Observer sought a review of the prime minister’s first year in office all broached the question – how long really is a year?

“A year is a long time. I mean a day is a long time in politics,” political analyst Troy Caine said, adding that the prime minister seems to have been more talk than substance.

“In your first year, you should be able to substantiate your ascendancy to the office of prime minister,” Caine continued.

But Sharpe Pryce suggested that the time frame issue is crucial in any assessment of the prime minister’s stated goals.

“The fact that she has not been able to accomplish most, if any, of the things she promised the people is understandable, because of the time frame, but it still [raises the question] ‘will she ever be able to do them?'” said Sharpe Pryce.

This question found ground with general-secretary of the Jamaica Baptist Union, the Reverend Karl Johnson, who delivered a fiery sermon in front of the nation’s leaders at the national prayer breakfast earlier this year.

Johnson suggested that while a year is not a terribly long time, promises from leaders need to have a time component.

“There needs to be a greater sense of connection in what you set out to do and what people sense to have been done,” Johnson said.

“It’s difficult when you say you have done ABC…how is it manifesting itself, or is it that these things will manifest in 10 years?”

The questions kept coming surrounding Simpson Miller’s first year.

Sharpe Pryce: How do leaders handle criticism?

Johnson: Who guarantees honeymoon periods in politics? and

business consultant and social activist, Henley Morgan: What are we willing to give her credit for?

Political historian Tony Myers gave the prime minister a score of eight from 10.

“In terms of foreign policy, she has done well,” Myers said. “Nobody can question her relations with the Venezuelan Government, her visit to the European Union, and Spain in particular. She has performed very well.”

Morgan suggested that an evaluation of the prime minister’s first year could be made based on social or economic indicators.

“If we are thinking in terms of economic indicators, then I think the general consensus is that the country did better this year than last year and the trends for economic renewal are moderate, if not strong,” Morgan said.

In a booklet it calls Highlights of 2006, the Office of the Prime Minister recaps most of Simpson Miller’s time in office. The booklet quotes a Planning Institute Of Jamaica (PIOJ) report that the economy grew by 1.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2006, which meant real growth of 1.8 per cent for the 2005/06 fiscal year.

For the first quarter of the new fiscal year, the booklet quotes Dr Wesley Hughes, head of the PIOJ, as saying that the economy experienced a 2.8 per cent growth.

But on social indicators, Morgan said, the country’s performance has been poor, with equally poor education and health systems and the high rate of crime and violence.

“And to put it generally, the investment in human and social capital continues to be appalling,” said Morgan. “The results are definitely going in a direction contrary to what any Jamaican would desire.”

The booklet from the OPM also points to international agreements signed and completed projects under the inner-city housing project.

But the prime minister has had far from a honeymoon year, with at least one major scandal, which saw the sacking of one Cabinet minister.

The prime minister’s handling of the Trafigura affair, Sharpe Pryce said, did not speak well of her ability to hold the members of her Cabinet responsible.

“In terms of how decisions are taken on key issues, somebody has to take responsibility, and being the leader, the buck stops with her,” Sharpe Pryce said.

“She made a significant statement on how she expects her ministers to perform and evaluated.the way she stated how she was going to deal with things in the Cabinet, we have not really seen that,” Sharpe Pryce added.

Sharpe Pryce believes that in her capacity as president of the PNP, Simpson Miller was so focused on maintaining party unity that she did not get a chance to deal with any structural adjustments. These include the choosing of delegates and the definition of their roles.

“When she took over the party, decisions were already being made, so what she has basically done is bring them to fruition. To be able to judge her on her own merit, we haven’t got that opportunity yet,” said Sharpe Pryce.

Caine said, however, that even while most of Simpson Miller’s Cabinet do not support her, he sees “nothing tangible coming from [her] in terms of governance.”

Caine said the Government has merely added another year to its record of low achievement.

“Nothing new has happened since ’02 (2002 general elections), nothing will make people change their thought process. I don’t think a new prime minister will do it,” Caine said, adding that the Trafigura affair has served to bolster already growing support for the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party.

“When the PNP cannot settle on a candidate for South East St Ann. South East St Ann has been the safest political seat in rural Jamaica since 1944,” Caine said, suggesting that the breakdown inside the ruling party started with the division caused by Simpson Miller’s election.

“The PNP is really going to be up against it (at the next parliamentary elections). It’s going to take a lot of things like postponing the increase in the toll for the highway, and other gimmickry which the PNP is quite familiar with,” Caine said.

But no one doubts the prime minister’s broad popularity with Jamaicans.

What she needs to do, Morgan said, is to capitalise on the basis of this popularity – her emotional intelligence (what he calls EI).

Combining the prime minister’s performance on both economic and social indicators, Morgan said it has been an average year for Simpson Miller. She has done no better or worse than her predecessors, he said.

“I think what has kept her average is her failure to lead from her strength. Her strength is what is referred to as emotional intelligence,” Morgan said, adding that the prime minister possesses the rarest and most valuable of leadership qualities.

“People debate about whether she has Intelligence Quotient, but I do know she has EI, but it seems to me that she is so preoccupied with the affairs of the state…we don’t hear from her enough. She is not available to motivate the nation,” Morgan said.

In order to maximise her emotional intelligence, a quality that people like Michael Manley here in Jamaica, Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Bill Clinton in the United States had, Simpson Miller needs a good team.

“The balance is to build a team which has trust in her in terms of the technical aspects of government and governance, and spend more time doing what she does best – providing leadership to the nation,” Morgan said.

Nevertheless, Sharpe Pryce said, one woman does not an election win.

“For persons who are concerned about where the country is going, we’re still not getting the impression that the PNP is struggling into the next election,” Sharpe Pryce said. “But it may be Mrs Simpson Miller that people love,” she continued. “First, she needs to understand that one person can’t win an election,” Sharpe Pryce said, pointing, as an example, to Michael Manley, who was very popular but suffered a landslide loss to the JLP in 1980.

Sharpe Pryce said Simpson Miller needs to desist from “majoring minor issues” and focus on the Cabinet and the country’s development goals.

Reverend Johnson said the prime minister must take a non-partisan approach to bettering the education, health and justice systems in the country.

“I think the prime minister did indicate that that is the direction she intends to go in terms of consensus building,” Johnson said.

“I know it is something that can be achieved. Whether she can achieve it, I don’t know, but that must always be a goal of leadership,” he said.

Myers, who said the prime minister’s Cabinet seems to have “settled down under her watch [and has realised] that she holds the key to a fifth term,” argued that under her guidance there should be significant improvement in the crime rate in the next year.

“The crowning aspect is her spirituality,” he said. “If she truly believes that what she is doing is to the glorification of God, then she will do well and Jamaica will prosper.”