Dear Editor,

The language is obvious. The intent is unmistakeable. The message is clear.

The Gleaner newspaper believes it knows better than the Government of Jamaica and the people who elected it a mere nine weeks ago.

Its editorial of May 2, 2016 did not even try to disguise the writer’s disappointment that the Jamaican people did not return the People’s National Party (PNP) to power on February 25. So it proceeds as if it can tell the new Government what it should do and how to run the economy along the same lines as the PNP.

The editorial purports to embrace Mr Michael Lee-Chin’s endorsement of the economic reform programme imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while pretending that Mr Andrew Holness himself had not said long before the election that his Administration in power would continue with the programme.

The editorial shamelessly put words into Mr Lee-Chin’s mouth: “Lest Mr Lee-Chin be misunderstood, achieving those quarterly targets under Jamaica’s IMF programme – including the especially tough one of a primary balance of 7.5 per cent of GDP – was not some experiment in delivering economic hurt on people, with the pain of failure being the stringencies of an external examiner. Indeed, what has been achieved under the IMF is sine qua non for reaching the target that Mr Lee-Chin has set himself.”

It warned the Government that the end of the current IMF programme in a year’s time “should not be a signal for the abandonment of discipline and letting loose the fiscal spigot”. The editorial writer fails to acknowledge that while we achieved relative economic stability under the IMF, we now have to dig deep and creatively to find the means to achieve the growth that has so far defied us.

The Gleaner does a disservice to the people of Jamaica who said by their votes that the PNP had failed to ease their hurt and was showing no skill or talent that would suggest that growth would come anytime soon.

The electorate has not forgotten that a solid foundation had been laid for economic growth by the previous JLP Administration between 2007 and 2011 and that the PNP has not built on that growth. Instead, it is an empty coffer which it has again handed over to the new Administration in 2016.

Mr Lee-Chin’s task of promoting growth is unlikely to be achieved by simply doing the same things over and over again and not expecting the same results. The objective of an IMF programme is to get us to the point where we can galvanise our Jamaican genius to achieve growth.

The Gleaner‘s implied suggestion that we are not capable of doing that is un-Jamaican.

The paper’s call that “no one should put obstacles in his (Lee-Chin’s) way, attempt to politicise his efforts, or subject him to the calumnies that were poured on Richard Byles, the chairman of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee, for simply declaring the facts of Jamaica’s performance under the IMF agreement and making clear that the environment was improving for investment”, is, indeed, the kiss of death.

Devon Whitehall

Vonhall2003@gmail.com