The late People’s National Party (PNP) Prime Minister Michael Manley was reported as saying that being in Opposition was boring. It’s probably worse than that.

Almost all the major internal fights and bloodletting seem to come during the period that a political party is in Opposition.

The latest examples have been the current in-fighting in the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) triggered by a bid to change its leader Mr Andrew Holness and subsequent actions on his party to remove some of the dissidents; and the PNP leadership fight that led to the challenge to Mrs Portia Simpson Miller while the party was in Opposition.

Discontentment that might have been shoved under the carpet tends to surface in Opposition when all the malcontents feel emboldened to challenge the status quo. One of the worst fights has been that labeled the Gang of Five which came to a head in 1995, leading to the departure of Mr Bruce Golding from the JLP to form the now moribund National Democratic Movement (NDM); and subsequently to the retirement of Mr Edward Seaga a few years later.

It strikes us in this space that the current Opposition JLP is struggling with more than just malcontents bent on removing Mr Holness. The party is yet to define its role as an Opposition.

The problem, it seems, is that there is no real or immediate alternative to the economic reform programme being pursued by the Simpson Miller Administration, as imposed by the International Monetary Fund. Mr Holness himself signaled that much in the run up to the 2011 general elections, saying that there was bitter medicine to come.

Since then, the Opposition has had a hard time finding an economic message to counter the Government, without it having a hollow ring to it. And that is despite setting up an economic committee.

The JLP has therefore resorted to ridiculing the passing of IMF tests, calling for growth without saying how that can be achieved without the IMF strictures and lately promising to end, of all things, poverty in Jamaica.

Finally, it seems to be hoping that the late Dr Carl Stone was right in contending that the Jamaican electorate does not vote in a party, rather it votes a party out of office when it gets fed up enough.

It’s the old and tired way of running an Opposition. We suggest that what is needed is a new template for how to oppose a government when options are few or non-existent.

The Jamaican trade union movement went through such an osmosis in the 1990s when its outmoded approach to worker representation, mainly strikes and sick-outs, was no longer relevant or effective in the face of a new economic paradigm.

For sure, it is never easy being an Opposition which is almost always terribly resource-starved. Indeed, the challenge to Mr Holness, if he still claims to be a transformational leader, is to set about crafting that template that might well serve future Oppositions.