EDUCATION Minister Andrew Holness will be sworn in as Jamaica’s ninth prime minister on Sunday afternoon after the current chief executive Bruce Golding tenders his resignation, Jamaica House revealed yesterday.

Holness will take the oath of office in a special ceremony at King’s House scheduled to begin at 4:00 pm, making him the youngest ever Jamaican, at age 39, to hold the country’s highest political office.

Yesterday, Golding presided over his final Cabinet meeting as prime minister and thanked his ministers for their support and hard work under his leadership.

“He noted that the Government had overcome significant challenges over the last four years but emphasised that much remains to be done to accelerate the pace of economic recovery in order to be able to tackle the country’s urgent social needs,” Jamaica House said in a news release.

Golding also noted that while some elements of the Government’s reform agenda had been completed, other important items are yet to be implemented. “These, he said, were at an advanced stage of preparation and urged his colleagues to complete the process as a matter of urgency,” the release said.

Golding also used the meeting to thank the cabinet secretary and the staff of the Cabinet Office as well as the permanent secretary and staff of the Office of the Prime Minister for their support during his tenure.

Jamaica House also said that after the Cabinet adjourned, “Golding convened a meeting of Government MPs and received their unanimous formal endorsement of Holness to succeed him as prime minister”.

Golding, the release said, will convey this advice to the governor general and tender his resignation on Sunday afternoon shortly before the ceremony at King’s House.

Holness’s meteoric elevation to the top job followed Golding’s shock announcement on September 25 — at the quarterly meeting of the Central Executive of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) — that he would not seek re-election as leader of the party at its annual conference in November. He also said he would step aside as prime minister as soon as a new party leader was elected.

According to the JLP, Golding told the meeting he had planned to lead the party into a second term of government and demit office within two years thereafter. “He said ‘the challenges of the last four years have taken their toll and it was appropriate now to make way for new leadership to continue the programmes of economic recovery and transformation while mobilising the party for victory in the next general elections’,” the JLP said.

Within days of his announcement, it became clear that Holness was the front-runner to replace Golding as he received backing from powerful members of the JLP’s parliamentary group.

The education minister’s position was strengthened further when Golding, in a national broadcast on October 2, clearly stated that it was time for leaders of his generation to make way for “younger people whose time has come, who are more in sync with 21st century realities, whose vision can have a longer scope and who can bring new energy to the enormous tasks that confront us”.

“In the next two months, I will be 64,” Golding said. “I feel it is time for me and people like me to make way and allow a new crop of leaders to step forward and unleash their energies and creativity.”

Yesterday, the State news agency, the Jamaica Information Service (JIS), in a news feature on Holness’s impending appointment, reported former Prime Minister Edward Seaga as saying that he did not share the belief that leaders need to be young. However, he argued that age was not an impediment if it is utilised in the correct way.

“I have known other young people who were more interested in serving themselves in politics, and for a time I lost my faith that we would ever find young people who could really be useful in becoming leaders to take this nation’s affairs on their shoulders,” the JIS quoted Seaga, who is largely regarded as Holness’s mentor.

“But Andrew, I think, is one who is not in that category, he is someone who is more focused on the national affairs of the country,” said Seaga, who welcomed and endorsed Holness as an ideal candidate for the top position and pointed out that the education minister “has the right make-up (and) the right characteristics” for the job.

Seaga, the JIS story said, recalled meeting Holness while the latter served as executive director of the Voluntary Organisation for the Upliftment of Children between 1994 and 1996.

“I noted that the person who was running it was a young man, and we got to talking and after sufficient time had passed, I asked if he would like to join me in what I was doing, and he agreed. It’s unusual to find young men in those kinds of situations, because it’s an area in which you are trained to give, and to give support and to give assistance, and men are not that caring. If it was a woman in the position, I could have understood it more. So, to me, it was a unique situation,” Seaga told the JIS.

Noting that Holness displays a “firm disposition”, Seaga said he is capable of making the correct decisions “with due consideration”.

“Those are the tools you need to handle problems, and with those tools I expect him to be able to cope. Now, it’s not every problem that you can cope with, and you always have to take advice, and that is the area in which he will have to, if he hasn’t yet mastered, learn how to adapt himself,” the JIS quoted Seaga.

In assuming the position of prime minister, Seaga said that Holness will need to focus on the economy, education and agriculture.

“The economy really comes first; until you fix that, you’re really not going anywhere. I think he had that as part of the training he had at the University of the West Indies from which he graduated. But if he hadn’t, he would have learnt enough in the past four years in which the JLP has been in power, because of the amount of discussions that would have taken place on the economy, to have a full grasp of it,” he noted.

Regarding education, Seaga credited Holness with initiating “far-reaching” and “ground-breaking” ideas in the ministry.

“So, I hope his care and attention to the ministry (of education) will be continued in one way or the other. You can’t solve all problems at one time. Pick the ones that are most important and the ones that can most readily be solved, so as to make some headway,” Seaga advised.