In the recent Budget debate Finance Minister Peter Phillips cited the re-establishment and the restoration of Jamaica’s credibility in the international marketplace as the reason US President Barack Obama is visiting Jamaica in early April. ‘International marketplace’ is wide, and a restoration of credibility there could mean fiscal responsibility via International Monetary Fund (IMF) dictates as well as Jamaica’s willingness to hand over to the US those it deems international criminal kingpins.

It may be purely political on the part of Dr Phillips, but if we make a dispassionate examination of certain events that took place when the JLP was in Government, we will see a confluence of negative events in the obstinacy of the Golding Administration in signing the extradition order for Dudus, the engagement of Manatt to lobby against the move, the resignation of Golding, and problems securing an IMF agreement in the period 2009 to late 2011.

Now that we have secured an IMF agreement under a PNP Administration, and were recently told by the PM that we got assistance from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC); and she apparently secured the OK from the CBC to admit it out loud. In light of the fact that we have passed a significant number of IMF tests, it would appear that the JLP Government had so muddied the water in the eyes of Washington that Jamaican diplomats and politicians in the PNP Administration needed skilful lobbying strengths to get Jamaica tight with the US from 2012 onwards. Which is another way of saying that at a certain stage of the last JLP administration the US State Department saw Jamaica as a pariah state, the message was conveyed to the IMF directors and, in a state of economic crisis where Jamaica could not secure international funding from the traditional sources, overseas diplomats from the US and in the EU states had all but committed the JLP Administration to the political and electoral graveyard.

In certain circles it is the civil thing to do to heap praise on former Prime Minister Bruce Golding for ‘doing the decent thing’ by resigning in late 2011. If the recent statements by Phillips and Simpson Miller are to be taken seriously, as they appear to be, it does appear that Golding did not purely act of his own volition and more than a nudge from our powerful international ‘partners’ was applied.

The hurried placement of an obviously unprepared Andrew Holness to the post of prime minister had to have been just an academic exercise, as our partners must have known that the JLP was already damaged goods and could not win any election held in such a scenario. It could, therefore, be said that when the PNP won the December 2011 election, our international partners got the Administration it preferred to do business with — the PNP.

But even more so, with no IMF agreement secured in the stage between 2009 to 2011, the IMF had more than assisted with the electoral demise of the JLP in 2011.

The Obama visit will boost Portia’s rating

With Obama set to visit on April 9, it will be a big fillip to Jamaica in that it will say we are open to the world for business. I do not consider it far-fetched that it was that same CBC which engineered the Obama visit.

Locally, it will boost the political and electoral ratings of Simpson Miller and the PNP. By the politics of attrition (isn’t it always so?), opinion polls published a few months ago had showed that the PNP was less popular than the JLP, and that Holness was more favoured in a reduced field than Simpson Miller.

Based on the quixotic actions of the Opposition Leader in chasing down constitutional duppies, and in failing to mend fences in a fractious JLP, it seems to me that he is convinced that those polls number are cast in cement.

The fact is, as much as many of those at the top of society are finding some reasons to be optimistic about the prospects for new investments, the decline of our dollar has brought about a general hardship among many of those in the middle, while large percentages of those at the bottom are moving around like economically deprived zombies.

When Obama touches down on Jamaican soil he will be visiting the land of Marley and the music that Obama once listened to. But his visit, as I said before, will be an endorsement of sorts, him saying that “You guys have problems but, in the larger scheme of things, I like the direction you’re taking”.

To the political diehard who fancies the PNP, when Obama arrives he will be here to speak with the ‘big woman’ in Jamaica House while the ‘little boy’ Andrew Holness will be forced into the role of innocent bystander. Matters at the top of the agenda must be our energy regime, the opening up of new markets and the possible solution to a shaky PetroCaribe deal with Venezuela.

Do we make a specific shift in loyalties, trade the deal at a discounted rate and ditch Venezuela who was there for us as a friend in need just because Obama has gifts to give? Point worth considering, although it has been the history of Jamaican governments that they do not switch loyalties with other developing countries even when leaned on by the US.

Andrew Holness and his path to political perdition

Ex-prime minister and perennial JLP Opposition Leader Eddie Seaga has a bit of advice for Andrew Holness. Take the court case of the pre-signed resignation letters all the way to the British Privy Council. Do it and enjoy many happy years in Opposition must be the signal implication.

There must come a time when one is in the process of chasing down rainbows when one must admit that there is no pot of gold at one end.

Holness was foisted on the nation, first by the exigencies of the time when Bruce Golding was having sleepless nights. Then when he was challenged by Audley Shaw, who I believed would have, on pure political terms, made a better foil for Simpson Miller — he won by a plurality of JLP delegates. It must also be counted that he was the sitting JLP leader and prime minister when he made a bad call for an early election in 2011 when he had the option of going into the latter half of 2012 when the nation would have been celebrating 50 years of Independence and our athletes were set to once again conquer the world in the summer Olympics of that year.

It is worth asking: Was Andrew Holness ‘ordered’ to call an election by our powerful overseas ‘partners’? If he was so ordered, it is useful to ask what were his options. Could he have said no when a potential ‘Sword of Damocles’ could be no re–engagement with the IMF? What would be the use of a government, any government of any colour in 2012, without an IMF agreement?

Having been challenged by Shaw and winning the internal election, Holness made the error of trying to be the second coming of Seaga by sidestepping those who had mouthed sentiments that were unflattering of him. He had the examples of the PNP at hand. He saw how Portia hugged up those who had challenged her. He must have known that, in a challenge, hot words will be the norm. He saw those words in the PNP and he saw the re-engagement and, he rejected that supreme moment of learning.

When he lost the initial court case he went to church and apologised. Then, in filing his appeal, he in essence threw out the apology. Now that he has lost the appeal, it is his belief that all in his party and farther afield must just forget all that went before, head to the trenches, and win the next elections on a canter.

It was never my belief that Holness was a parliamentary purist. I do not know at which stage he morphed from politician to constitutional scholar. I am not saying that a politician cannot appeal to a principled position while he is chasing down an election win, but one would assume that the time to joust at constitutional windmills is after one has solved the political problems in one’s party. The road to his election victory has never and will never exist in the courts. Or it could be that he and our international ‘partners’ have struck a deal that he must do all in his powers to lose the next election.

Recently Holness took to entering the fray with Portia over what food poor people were eating. The lady who I had the telephone conversation was solidly middle class.

“Andrew must know that he should not go there with Portia. That is her turf, and if he goes there the voters he need will see him as coming out against them because in a war of words with Portia over poor people business Andrew cannot win.”

I believe the time is ripe for Andrew to go back to church again. This time around he will have to fall on his knees and shed real tears, long and hard.

observemark@gmail.com