So Peter Phillips will succeed Portia Simpson Miller as president of the People’s National Party (PNP). I have known Peter Phillips for more than half of a century. My first-ever published work was printed in the Jamaica College (JC) magazine of 1967 while a student there. Peter Phillips, as a co-editor of that magazine, insisted that I contribute an article, as there was none yet from the junior section of the school. At that time Phillips was a prefect at JC and I was coming to the end of my third year at the school.

By the way, at no time was there ever a contest between Bruce Golding and Peter Phillips for head boy. When Bruce Golding was head boy, Phillips was not yet a prefect, and the head boy was usually chosen from the prefects. Phillips is two years younger than Bruce Golding and was appointed a prefect the following year. In boarding school Phillips was the monitor at the head of the dining room table I sat at while in second form.

In his university years Phillips became a Rastafarian. I have seen him go from bald head to dreadlocks to bald head again.

Now that Peter Phillips is the president-designate of the PNP I have a few suggestions for him. The PNP needs to return to Norman Manley’s vision, which was the source of all of Michael Manley’s policies in the 1970s.

Phillips should attract young people to the PNP by having essay competitions and other such things about Norman Manley. And the PNP parliamentarians need to learn more about Norman Manley also. Perhaps the PNP parliamentarians should be taxed an extra $5,000 per month until they get their political education right.

We seem to have come full circle in recent times with the merger of some entities. In the 1970s Michael Manley took Social Development Commission (SDC) — originally Jamaica Welfare, founded by his father Norman Manley in 1967 — and made each department stand on its own. The SDC’s ‘Each one teach one’ adult literacy classes became the national literacy programme — later known as Jamaican Movement for the Advancement of Literacy (JAMAL), now Jamaica Foundation for Lifelong Learning (JFLL).

The Youth Development Agency, renamed Youth and Community Services in the 1970s, was the department for the youth camps and youth clubs. During the 1980s the youth camps evolved into the Human Employment and Resource Training (HEART) Trust programme, as done by Edward Seaga.

More than decade ago JAMAL became the JFLL. Now that entity is to be merged with HEART Trust, along with National Youth Service, apparently from a recommendation made by the Public Sector Transformation Unit in the Public Sector Master Rationalisation Plan of 2011.

The PNP needs to emphasise cooperatives also as part of the Manley vision. In the 1940s, co-operatives were seen as a way of combating destitution in Jamaica. Today, destitution has been replaced by stress as just about everyone seems worried that some collector or other will come for outstanding payments or seize goods. At least co- operatives, which by definition are owned by its members, will provide an income so that their bully bosses will not stress them out just because they know that they have bills to be paid.

At the same time, the credit union movement needs to go back to its earlier teaching about thrift. No one should hang his/her hat higher than can be reached; although the owners of big businesses do not mind as long as they make their sales. But there are consequences for the labour force when they are stressed out in terms of production and economic growth.

In recent times we have heard of plans to have Parliament reduce the democracy in co-operatives by disallowing nominations from the floor. This must be sharply resisted by the members. I have argued over the years that rights to join co-operatives, on the one hand, and privately owned companies on the other, should be enshrined in the Constitution of Jamaica so that politicians cannot change this law at a whim.

I can only hope that good sense will prevail. Finance Minister Audley Shaw relies heavily on voters in his constituency who are members of the Christiana Potato Growers Co-operative. But the PNP should never allow this to happen, given its own history in the development of co-operatives in Jamaica. Indeed, for the PNP to be a viable alternative it needs to take back the left. In recent times it seems as if the Jamaica Labour Party is to the left of the PNP, instead of the other way around.

To do all of this, the PNP needs to set up a task force for youth and get them into action. In any case, whether or not Peter Phillips becomes prime minister, or is only a transitional leader as some are suggesting, it would be good if he does this. I do not take the view that his age will make a difference. With regard to elections in Jamaica, it is the party that mobilises more of its voters that will win the election.

The young voters are still turned off by the electoral process. I have written that if the young voters had voted on the basis of which leader is younger then the JLP would have won 56 seats in February 2016 General Election, not a mere 32. The young people need to be engaged in the political process, and this can be done even in Opposition. But whichever way the next election goes, Peter Phillips is the best person to be the president of the PNP in 2017.

From the perspective of socialism, young people need to know that so-called capitalist prosperity does not work for the poor, because the trickle-down theory does not work. The stronger economy of the 1950s and 1960s was of very little benefit to the poor, as was manifested in the living conditions at the time. One photograph of primary school children in the 1960s should suffice. The main thing that will be noticed is that they went to school barefooted.

Young voters, indeed, individuals of all ages, need to know the importance of working together. Socialism has to be sold as a programme of working together for the benefit of all, which is really what co-operatives are all about.

With respect to Caricom, it was the former Secretary General Edwin Carrington who said that it’s either we swim together or drown separately. That statement is far more applicable to Jamaica than perhaps anywhere else.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com