Dear Editor,

Jamaican politics does not demand men and women of character, strength or courage. Jamaican politics demands that you tell lies, grand lies, and when all else fails it is time to blame the opposition and lie some more. After all, they will never have the facts, and even if they did, the majority of voters could not understand the facts even if they had them.

Our current finance minister needs to be more sensitive to how history will see him and his tenure when there are no more elections to be won by him.

The reforms being insisted on by the IMF did not begin with this crop of IMF people. Even more on point, they did not begin during the JLP term of office. Peter Phillips knows this.

The advertisement in the Sunday Observer of December 30, 2012, on “remaining issues” is simply a regurgitation of previous paragraphs.

There is a time for politics and there is a time for leadership.

Leadership demands that Peter Philips should get to work and drive his ministry to complete the reforms agreed on for Tax Administration, inclusive of Customs. Leadership demands that Dr Phillips should take out the Matalon tax report, the Orane report and begin a programme of implementation. The failure to implement did not begin with the JLP administration. It has been with us for a long time and the IMF is well aware of this. You see, they were here before and many of the things they are insisting on were put forward by their previous IMF colleagues with whom Jamaica was negotiating.

Peter Phillips knows this; he will not say this because it would not be good politics. The IMF does not trust the words of Jamaican politicians. Can you blame them? Peter Phillips’ view was that they would trust him. Silly fellow!

What they want to see is action. This is not complicated stuff, but it needs decisions to be taken. Start early with the following:

(1) Complete the legislative work to make Tax Administration semi-autonomous

(2) Complete the reform of Jamaica Customs

(3) Enact the legislation necessary (if any) to reform the public sector pension scheme.

(4) Begin, that’s right, begin a programme to right-size the public sector to one we can afford, and enshrine it in legislation.

(5) Begin to enact the tax policy changes necessary; no more studies please — they all have been saying the same things

Get the plan together, Peter, and drive it through Cabinet, make them hear you, or join the back-benchers.

That’s leadership, sir, that’s courage; other than that you will be remembered as nothing more than a political sycophant, happy to just go along for the ride.

Eliot Penn

Kingston 5