Dear Editor,

Winston Churchill once said that the farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

In looking back, former Prime Minister Edward Seaga said that the predicament facing the PNP today is no different from that faced by the JLP in the early 1980s — a fall-off in bauxite foreign exchange earnings and a high public sector wage bill.

Then, the IMF told the Government what to do; he had to lay off 30,000 public sector workers and borrow heavily to support imports. Seaga said that former Prime Minister Michael Manley had refused to lay off 10,000 public sector workers and by the time he took office it had escalated to 30,000 jobs.

Manley had said: “We are not for sale”, and with that promise he couldn’t go to the IMF without damaging his credibility. By the end of the 1980s, the Jamaican economy had begun to show growth, but the Jamaican electorate didn’t care. They booted Seaga out of office and returned the country to the man who had reduced its GDP by 20 per cent.

Manley had said: “We are not for sale”, and with that promise he couldn’t go to the IMF without damaging his credibility. By the end of the 1980s, the Jamaican economy had begun to show growth, but the Jamaican electorate didn’t care. They booted Seaga out of office and returned the country to the man who had reduced its GDP by 20 per cent.

Then, as now, there exists a split in the Cabinet over the new IMF agreement. With the prime minister winning the December 2011 election under the slogan ‘people power’, she can’t afford to lay off thousands of public sector workers.

Dr Peter Phillips, I am told, wants to swing the axe, but the prime minister, who loves the poor, won’t let him.

Meanwhile, the public sector workers will have to settle for another wage freeze, and one hopes that this time they don’t suffer from frostbite. Pneumonia and amputation usually follow such a predicament. It will be hard for them to survive, given a rapidly falling dollar and climbing food bills.

Even though Mr Holness suffered a humiliating defeat at the polls, he can take some comfort in the fact that he spoke the truth. His only mistake was misreading the situation in that honesty and politics shouldn’t exist in the same sentence.

Oppenheimer Managing Director Gregory Fisher, while speaking at the Jamaica Stock Exchange Investments and Capital Markets Conference, likened Jamaica to Japan and said that along with Greece we are the world’s most indebted countries. He described the treatment we need as “nasty medicine”. It would have been disrespectful to the prime minister sitting there to say “bitter medicine”.

Whichever it is, we are in for difficult times, and one wonders if we wouldn’t have been better off swallowing our pride and consulting with Mr Seaga rather than stumbling blindly in the dark. After all, he has been there and done that.

Mark Clarke

Siloah, St Elizabeth

mark_clarke9@yahoo.com

Michael Manley