Now that the new Portia Simpson Miller Administration has started to take shape, we hope that it will remember and retain the wise advice offered by the Rt Rev Robert Thompson, Anglican Suffragan Bishop of Kingston, in his New Year’s Day sermon.

Bishop Thompson, as was reported by this newspaper on Wednesday, cautioned the Government against ignoring the social reality of the poor when formulating economic policy.

Economic and monetary policies shaped by market forces alone, Bishop Thompson warned, will have negative consequences for the country.

“It never fails to amaze me, that when successive governments speak about a social contract, the poor are usually excluded from the equation,” the bishop told his congregation at the Kingston Parish Church. “We make a terrible mistake when we assume that the poor have nothing to contribute to the social capital.

“History teaches us that when the gap grows between the rich and the poor, when the middle gets increasingly squeezed, and those at the bottom are almost completely forgotten, social bonds begin to unravel and resentment sets in,” he said. “The poor must not be seen as the subject of our benevolence, but as part of the social capital for national development.”

Bishop Thompson, of course, was spot on in his analysis of one of the major problems affecting this country. The irony, though, is that what he said on Sunday has been said by the Church for a very long time.

In fact, we hold firmly to the view that were it not for the missionary work of the Church, the social conditions in Jamaica would be much worse today.

Tens of thousands of poor and destitute Jamaicans across the island are fed and cared for daily through exemplary outreach programmes run by churches of all denominations.

But there is little hope of the lives of those Jamaicans improving if, as Bishop Thompson pointed out, we continue to exclude the poor in the formulation of the social contract.

We expect, therefore, that as the Simpson Miller Administration goes about tackling the difficult issues relating to our economy, it will do so with the needs of the marginalised in mind. For, as Bishop Thompson quite rightly said, if we continue to ignore the voices that speak about these social disparities we do so to our peril.

Against that background, we will hold Mrs Simpson Miller to her pledge made yesterday at her inauguration ceremony that her administration will balance people’s lives while balancing the books.

We will also hold her to her commitment to transparency and support her pledge to reject governmental extravagance and to be vigilant in eliminating corruption.

The new administration would also do well to take another bit of advice from Bishop Thompson, that is, being open and available to others while, at the same time, affirming their self-worth.

We agree with him that nothing short of that will work in Jamaica today.