JAMAICA Labour Party (JLP) Leader Andrew Holness yesterday poured cold water of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s suggestion that Jamaica has made progress under the People’s National Party (PNP) Government, saying the party was trying to sell the country a placebo.

A placebo is the medical term for a pill or treatment designed to give patients the psychological feeling that their illness is being treated while, in reality the treatment has no effect on the patients’ illness.

On Sunday, Holness told a JLP divisional conference at Grove Town in South Manchester that in 2011 “the PNP made oxtail and curry goat promises on the economy, jobs, the IMF and protecting the poor”, which saw many Jamaicans buying into the “sugar pill”.

According to Holness, Simpson Miller’s speech to the PNP annual conference on Sunday “was yet another barefaced attempt to sell another placebo to the Jamaican people”.

He added: “The PNP is trying to go into an election with very little to offer the people in real terms; just recycled promises, false statistics, and false hope.”

However, he warned that he would not stand by and allow the Jamaican people to be tricked again, saying he told the truth to the Jamaican people and that truth will set him free.

Holness said the JLP had a plan to expose the false claims and ‘trickery’ of the PNP, and that he will be campaigning on the facts which support the JLP’s arguments.

The JLP leader then went on to list several areas of the economy in which the JLP had performed better than the PNP.

He also heaped praises on the JLP’s spokesman on finance and planning, Audley Shaw, who was also in attendance at the meeting, for “revolutionising” the high-interest rate regime in Jamaica.

He said that this meant that the cost of borrowing for business went down and mortgage rates and student loan rates were cut in half.