It’s a healthy sign that the People’s National Party (PNP) intends to act on the recommendations of its appraisal committee that looked at the reasons for the party’s narrow loss at the general election in February this year.

Because the easy thing to do would be to discuss and analyse the recommendations to the point where their non-implementation would have gone unnoticed, as has been the case with so many reports on a range of troubling issues.

Readers will recall that the appraisal committee recommended the creation of a central campaign management manual, as well as the need for aspiring candidates to be approved by the party’s Integrity Commission before facing the electorate.

The committee also recommended:

• That the party secretariat be strengthened in the areas of organising, enumeration, communication and recruitment

• The implementation of a pilot programme to reform the role of party groups

• The establishment of a group of mentors to provide guidance and support, especially to new members of parliament and candidates

• The need to develop a time frame within which internal disputes are resolved, and the decisive application of the necessary sanctions; and

• Strengthening of the political capacity and relationship of the party’s arms and affiliates by developing strategic objectives and a political work programme for each.

The committee, we recall, also said that while the secretariat will be responsible for the implementation of the recommendations, a sub-committee of the PNP’s executive committee should be set up to monitor the process after the suggestions are adopted by the party.

On Sunday, PNP President Portia Simpson Miller told the party faithful and, by extension, the wider Jamaica, that coming out of the 78th annual conference she will begin the implementation of the recommendations.

We will be watching to see if Mrs Simpson Miller will follow-up on that pledge, or whether she was merely making an announcement which, we have come to acknowledge, is a hobby of politicians.

In much the same way we will await further word, and indeed action, from the PNP president on her promise to “implement a more centralised system for campaign donations”.

For Mrs Simpson Miller is spot on in her declaration that any such system “must ensure that funds raised are properly accounted for and used for the purposes for which they were contributed”.

We agree with her that the matter of transparency in campaign financing applies to all political parties, and as such, we urge our legislators to give swift attention to the regulations governing the application of the law.

As we have stated before, while there is no system that is foolproof, we believe that this law will give the country some ammunition to insulate our democracy from purchase.