IT seems not so long ago that it was the JLP which was in opposition and the PNP, having cemented itself in power (by the will of the people) from 1989 to the period leading up to the election campaign of 2007, was the government that had to be dug out for any other party to have a bite of the cherry.

Teenagers who were say, 16 years of age in 1989 would then, in 2007, be parents worrying about seeing their children through the finishing stages of high school, paying the regular monthly on the second-hand car out of Japan and struggling with a mortgage on a Portmore quad.

During that time, PNP politicians, sons and daughters of slaves that were stolen from the west coast of Africa in the Atlantic Slave Trade, would be riding around in fancy, air-conditioned vehicles that were never ever available to their slave masters, having people bowing and scraping to them as they said, “Minister…” and seeing the security detail go crazy if someone who looked like a slave of old approach said minister.

It was indeed a good time to be PNP because that party held power, had broken the back of what had been seen as the perennial two-term syndrome in the elections of 1997 (the PNP’s third term) and it had also created history in seeing a female prime minister — Portia Simpson Miller — after P J Patterson, the win kid, had decided to pass on power.

Why therefore should the JLP, the party of Bustamante, national hero, not want back what Busta had willed to it. How could the JLP explain to itself the reason for its time ‘outa bush’ in opposition from 1989 to the times headed to 2007 when Jamaican voters in their simplistic, foolish, illiterate times had promised to ‘follow Bustamante until we die’.

When the 2007 election results were read and it was announced that the JLP had won, the grandchildren of Bustamante had secured their bite of the cherry — ripe cherry. They had won! They had displaced the close to two decades-run of the PNP and, to that 16-year-old in 1989 whose interests in life had gone far beyond that year, 2007 was a watershed year for him, his woman and their teenage children.

JLP politicians were now, after being so long in the pasture of political forgetfulness, in power. After their prime minister had awarded many for long, faithful service and others for actually being thought of as ‘qualified’, many found themselves riding in fancy air-conditioned vehicles, having people bowing and scraping to them and could tell their security detail to wait in the car, with the AC on, until the two-hour lunch with ‘whomever’ was completed.

“It’s all about power,” said a JLP minister to me recently. “It transforms a normal person, it turn dem who can’t handle it inna idiot,” he said.

“Can you handle it?” I asked of him. He chuckled then asked, “What is your assessment of me and my handling of my ministry?”

I was in his house, drinking his expensive wine and he expected an answer from me? “On the assumption that the PNP has mucked up, what can you do to convince the people of this country that your Prime Minister Bruce Golding is a better performer than the PNP of 1989 to 2007?” I asked.

Smart man that he was, he suggested that it was the job of the media to make an honest assessment of the comparative performances. I said to him, “Do you really believe that Jamaicans are into looking at PNP versus JLP? Don’t you see, as Seaga implied many years ago, that people are prepared to fry the fat of one party in the other, that the failure of one transforms to the failure of the political system rather than just the other party?”

“Yes,” he suggested, but added, “The PNP had a free ride from the 1990s to just before we came in. They did not experience what we had to go through, what the world and Jamaica had to go through in the global recession. If you are really honest, you would agree with me.”

I had no problem in agreeing with him, but was forced to point out to him that Jamaicans, like most people in the world, can only judge politicians to the extent that they believe those politicians have advanced the cause of the people. A year after the recession, heading into 2009 I had written that governments would face mass ‘revolts’ in that it would be natural for the electorate to vote them out of power. That observation and quick analysis took no great powers of perception.

If people were hurting economically, the easiest target would be the party in power. It had to have been terribly poor karma for the JLP to be elected in 2007, just about the time that Wall Street fancy derivatives were about to prove to the world that in making a few rich, the entire world could face a mass crumbling of financial systems.

Thoughts of elections heading into the latter half of the year, fear of hurricane disasters and the really big one — the likelihood of the JLP only having one term (a record if it happened) — were on the mind of the minister.

“Do you think Jamaicans are stupid? Do you really believe that they would be prepared to vote for the same old team, nothing changed, that governed this country for so long? Be honest, Mark,” he said.

“So,” I asked him, “Do you believe that your party has been able to convince Jamaican voters not to do that?”

We spoke about the Manatt matter, plus nearly a year before we had spoken on the Dudus extradition. Then he had said to me, “The PM is smarter than a lot of you think. Don’t you think that he is talking to the Americans? Don’t you believe that he knows that the man must go. Use yu head,” he implored me. “It’s like a game that the people will never understand. Up front, we the JLP have to play a hand, but behind the scenes we have to play another, the right hand.”

As we brought ourselves back to the present I wanted to know how he believed the planned mass layoff of staff in the public sector would affect the party. “You were the first journalist to write of it and although I got the impression that you were guessing, you came close. At one stage you said, 25,000, then 15,000, then you said probably 10,000. So I knew you were guessing. Have you spoken to the Pearnel (the labour minister)? You must have. What did he tell you?”

In truth I did speak to Pearnel Charles, but I was not prepared to tell him what our ‘off the record’ chat was about. “You know that I got myself in trouble with Pearnel some years ago so, let me shut my mouth now.”

He laughed.

That the JLP was pretty much about between four percentage and 10 percentage points behind the Opposition PNP last year and at this time is still about 10 percentage or so behind the PNP is no surprise to me. It ties in to what my assessments were of incumbents, or those in government.

My own view that the PNP has proven little to the people to deserve the nod next time out pales beside the reality of people hurting economically. Plus, in any event, opposition parties have always enjoyed the best of both worlds — having the audacity to suggest any and everything while having no responsibility to back it up.

In Jamaica our backward political culture is one where the PNP and the JLP have never seen it fit to make an agreement on something that would be slotted under ‘national agenda’. The house slaves that our politicians are have never removed themselves from ‘carrying news’ to the boss, only in the present instance, the ‘boss’ is a big lie.

So it has never suited the Opposition to agree with the JLP Government on a crime plan. It has never suited the PNP to agree with the JLP on an education plan, a health plan, one for the elderly, one for children, transportation, tax reform, etc. In truth, the JLP played the same game when it was in its Seaga-induced long opposition, and now Audley Shaw and Mike Henry, the stars of the moment, find themselves having to defend plans and projects that the PNP, were it in power, would have endorsed.

In that game-playing, we are hurt, because after the Gordon House banter, they meet and laugh with each other. We are the real fools, the field slaves in the heat of the sun.

Public sector layoffs will hurt the JLP

THE PNP will have an easy time, seeing the JLP doing the very opposite of what it did during the time it occupied government, that is, increasing the sheer numbers of people employed in government.

Based on what we all knew was coming, the Government has announced that in the next calendar year, it is likely that about 2,000 workers will be sent home. It will be that much per year until the 10,000 number is reached.

It is quite likely that in 2013 it could be the PNP in power that may find itself committed to that exercise.

People on the outside of the government service are always disposed to pontificate about ‘bloated’ government. We do that because we do not have jobs there, neither do we have close relatives, like wives or husbands, working in the service.

Sending home a worker is easy on the organisation doing so. It gets harder as we narrow it down to the person in the organisation signing the dismissal letter. The real hard grind comes to the person receiving it. It is painful and terribly traumatic.

To some others, however, the plan is sinister. According to my good friend Lloyd D’Aguilar, head of Campaign for Social and Economic Justice, something is amiss. Lloyd offers no suggestions as to what he would do were he in government. He begins in his blog, “The Government’s long awaited plan to separate public sector workers from their jobs has finally been announced. During his budget presentation the prime minister stated that 10,000 workers will be let go over a five-year period and will save the government 40 to 50 billion Jamaican dollars. The editors of The Gleaner are no doubt happy unless they expected more workers to be let go. They have long campaigned for this, as well as a number of other private sector leaders who have been calling for the public sector to be savaged as Edward Seaga advocated. The IMF has been a little more coy about the whole matter, but they have left no doubt in their very cautious statements that they expected this to happen sooner or later as part of compliance with the agreement signed with the government.”

D’Aguilar is a socialist in his thinking, therefore the laying off of workers is an abomination to him. Somehow, somewhere, the funds must be found to pay them. He does not address the sloth and inefficiency that are par for a significant percentage of those in the government service who tend to believe they own their jobs. Years ago when I worked eight to four in the private sector I had that mindset. I was young then, so I have an excuse.

D’Aguilar continues. “Words cannot describe the barefaced treachery of these trade union leaders who ought to pay back every cent of the salary they have taken from public sector workers… they lied publicly when they said that there would be no layoffs; and thirdly, they betrayed the workers by not giving them a chance to express themselves on the pending layoffs. Anyone who takes the time to talk to public sector workers would discover how scared they are of losing their jobs, and hear their bitter complaints about the lack of communication and forthrightness from their trade union leaders.”

I agree with Lloyd that workers are deathly scared of losing their jobs, and why should they not be so?

He ascribes some perverse honesty to Information Minister Daryl Vaz who recently told us that the layoffs could harm the Government’s political fortunes. “Up to when Information Minister Daryl Vaz said not long ago that massive layoffs were pending, these misleaders continued to play their deceptive game by running to Finance Minister Audley Shaw to get clarification. Shaw, of course, told them what they wanted to hear — that no such layoffs were pending. This blatant lie they then used as a fig leaf to go on giving false comfort to public sector workers that there would be no layoffs. As late as last week they were saying the same thing on Cliff Hughes’ programme.”

Lloyd refers to the union leaders as ‘eunuchs’, men with no cojones, no assertiveness. But what is Mr D’Aguilar’s solution?

“I challenge the eunuchs. Call your workers to mass meetings and let them decide the way forward. Enough of your cowardice and deception.”

Seriously now, Lloyd, as rough as it may be to send home a worker, what would you do were you the head of your own company employing 100 workers and facing a 20 per cent to 30 per cent downturn in sales or demand? Leave it to the workers? To do what? To pay themselves out of air?

Notionally I support my friend because I believe that deep down most people who classify themselves as ‘caring’ have a socialist bent. In reality, the world works differently. Do you have any other solutions Lloyd?

Poor roads are killing us

IT has been the belief among many Jamaicans that our poor driving habits are the main cause of the carnage on our roads.

I beg to differ, but with a twist. It seems to me that while there will always be bad drivers anywhere in the world, what Jamaica has more than anything else is an attitudinal problem and it is mirrored in our drivers. They fail to respect the other people’s space.

It happens in night noise, in taxis blaring loud music and in people in public passenger vehicles behaving like hogs. It happens in a man walking across the road to urinate against a light post. It happens in the movie theatre with obnoxious people making noises and smoking weed.

Unfortunately, that is too much of Jamaica.

Assisting the carnage on the road are the state of the roads. With the JDIP rolling all the way to the next elections, some roads have been in a poor state since last July. The picture shown here is a road, believe it or not, of a ‘pothole’ close to Sterling Castle. Immersed in it is Sterling Castle resident, my friend ‘Tampa’.

One is tempted to seek help from MP Andrew Gallimore but since he has little power, we are forced to request the assistance of the man of the moment, Minister Mike Henry. Any help, minister?

observemark@gmail.com