So we all brace for more bad news as the budget is read today by finance minister Audley Shaw. When it was announced last year that Jamaica would return to the International Monetary Fund, we heard that the IMF had changed. I was one who never believed that for a minute and felt that the IMF would make life very difficult for us as it did in the 1980s.

We hear that the IMF dictated that the government subsidy be removed from Jamaica Urban Transit Corporation resulting in a 60 per cent hike in bus fares. This is counter-productive. If people cannot get to work, there will be a drop in production of everything, including goods for export. How will we then earn enough to pay our debts?

And how will Jamaica pass those awful three monthly tests that the IMF imposes? The IMF lends money in three-monthly instalments and then imposes a test to see if their instructions were carried out. If we do not pass the test the money for the next three months will not be lent.

Had the IMF been comprised of an enlightened board, they would offer funds to subsidise public transportation so that production could take place. And the IMF could have insisted that the government urges Jamaicans to get production going or remove the bus subsidy.

But most accountants and bankers, not just IMF, are not trained to think outside the box so it is not likely that the IMF will ever do that. It is like baking cakes in the kitchen of an army or a monastery. A prescribed recipe is followed to the letter and there is no room for innovations. And it is outside of the IMF “recipe” or even the “cookbook” to implement production enhancement programmes that empower the poor at the same time.

I suspect that the government decided to go the IMF route because the alternative would be to cut foreign exchange spending by removing imported foods and other luxury items. I suspect that they dreaded the reaction of the public if simple things like the expensive luxuries and other niceties were curtailed.

The last time that small luxuries like American apples and corn flakes were not imported was in the 1970s when the People’s National Party led by Michael Manley was in power. Please understand that there were no local varieties of corn flakes in the 1970s so it meant a total absence of corn flakes. But a simple thing like that was used as one of the campaign tools to defeat the PNP in the 1980 elections.

It certainly would be a case of coming full circle if the PNP Opposition was now the one to use the political strategy of lamenting the absence of such foreign niceties. But it would also be a tremendous irony if the PNP were to do that because of what that party has traditionally stood for. Michael Manley wrote in Struggle in the Periphery, “the PNP was always socialist in the sense that it never said it was not”.

So the real boost to the economy in terms of money in the pockets of the poor has to wait until there is an injection of funds from a foreign source. One such is to come into being by a grant of the Chinese government later this year. Apparently 18, 000 people will be employed in road-work programmes, chief of which is to be lifting the Norman Manley Highway (formerly Palisadoes Road) by eight feet.

And while many will say that 18,000 jobs are a “drop in the bucket”, very few of the 18,000 workers will keep their money under their beds. Some of it will be spent which will mean that many more will benefit. Even if all the money is put into financial institutions it will boost the borrowing power of bank customers and credit union members.

In that “feel-good” situation Bruce Golding might then call an election. But for him it might be too late. True, the Opposition PNP is not currently election-ready, which is why Golding’s best bet would be to call a snap election now. Had the PNP been election-ready they would more than likely be daring the prime minister to call an election. But they are not, so no such dare is coming from the PNP.

However, by the time Golding calls the election the PNP might well be in a state of readiness especially if a leader is in place that can attract funding. Elections are won by organisation and that takes money. If organisation is the vehicle, then money is the gasoline. There is no benefit in having the best racing car for a car race if the gas tank is empty.

So while the PNP is traditionally better organised than the JLP, they do not have the gas money to get their organisational machinery going. But that can change. And if it does then this JLP government might be the first one-term government in the history of Jamaica.

At the same time, it is true to say that many young voters are not yet ready to give up their faith and loyalty to the JLP. If the PNP wants to win the next election it must act now. It must elect a president who can get the funding to win and pursue that path with great dispatch.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com