Golding: JLP prepared to debate manifesto
CAMBRIDGE, St James – Opposition Leader Bruce Golding says he is prepared to debate the contents of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) manifesto with anyone that is willing to do so.
“We will talk about what we said [in] there,” he told a crowd of supporters in Cambridge Square on Thursday night.
The JLP launched their election manifesto on Monday at a function at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston. A series of national debates are also planned for the next two weeks following Nomination Day next Tuesday and leading up to the August 27 national polls.
The JLP leader has been touring western Jamaica this week and after a stop in Falmouth on Tuesday, toured sections of St James on Thursday and was due to be in eastern Hanover last night.
The JLP’s continued campaigning defies Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s call that both major political parties cease campaigning between July 31 and August 6 in deference to the Emancipation and Independence period.
Thursday night Golding said he had been asked how a JLP government would find money to do all they promised in the manifesto and said, “we going to create a policy framework, we are going to get private sector investment in a way that you have not seen before and not only in hotel business.”
He likened the country’s economic state to a small restaurant where, after an investor buys it out, realises there are so many debts, they can’t even afford to buy “two bags of flour”.
“That’s what has happened to the country,” Golding told the crowd. “The country mash up so bad so even if you want to even find a billion dollars to pay tuition fees for poor people’s children you can’t find it… but we are going to find it because we are not going to preside over an economy that is dying we are going to get investments and grow the economy.”
“When we are growing this economy you watch us how we are going to address many of these problems because once the economy is growing and we are generating income and we are earning revenue from this income there are many, many things that we are going to be able to do,” Golding added.
