The “Portmore as a Parish” debate is rather déjà vu, but not for reasons of politics. It reminds me of the film The Golden Child starred by Eddie Murphy, a classic movie which has got me thinking: Is Portmore the Golden Child, a centre piece for its wonders and promise, but belittled when talk of its ascension to a place of prophecy comes up?

A parish is academically defined as a subdivision of a country often coinciding with an original ecclesiastical parish and constituting the unit of local government. The hard, cold fact is this, Portmore as a municipality within St Catherine has always been destined to erupt and become this space — a parish.

The Portmore Municipality, as conceived, was supposed to be a model for the Caribbean — a community binging on development via the turn of the century idealism of new public management principles and urban transformation. It was the fusion of ideas on governance, transparency, accountability, technology, and citizen-focus that would replace the archaic structures of red tape and bureaucracy.

Arguably, all academic-speak, but the citizens of Portmore took a these principles into action when they took the Government to the Privy Council over the toll road debacle in 2007. Portmore has never been a ‘normal’ municipality, and the powers that be must put some respect on their name.

Specifically, the top three reasons Portmore was never normal — and is indeed the Golden Child:

1) St Catherine is the only parish with two municipalities, simply because Portmore’s journey was never about being a rival to the St Catherine Municipal Corporation, but to be a model of how a municipality can develop a community to such a state of autonomy and prosperity. Can we really deny the corporate business mogul Portmore has become by itself?

2) Portmore represents the largest middle class community in the entire Caribbean, a model reflecting the plan to develop Portmore, ensuring even one degree per household is not just merely a dormitory community but an intellectually powerful workforce.

3) Portmore is the only corporation to have a duly and directly elected mayor. This was by design to show how governance and leadership structured around a directly accountable leadership to the citizens would change the way community development is managed, no other municipality in Jamaica has this structure

We must judge the municipality on its own merit. The question we must ask is: Has the experiment been a success and has the model been bearing fruit?

To borrow words that outline some simple facts about the municipality’s development, we turn to its mayor who rightly states: “It has been transformed from swamps, mangroves and farmlands, with scattered hamlets and dirt tracks to a modern metropolis. The Municipality of Portmore is a burgeoning metropolis and one of Jamaica’s most progressive urban centres. We are the fastest-growing community in the English speaking Caribbean,” said Leon Thomas, mayor of Portmore.

And that right there is the only salient point worth debating whether Portmore, through its municipality, has fulfilled its purpose of showing how a new model can transform a relatively desolate space into a fully urbanised parish. Yes, it has!

Yes, it has become a business investment hub attracting diverse investments to create jobs and wealth. Yes, it has attracted the largest pool of graduates to a single space, satisfying their search for both work and housing. Ye,s it has become the beacon or urbanisation for other municipalities to follow. Yess it has shown that local government can be the engine of development. Yess is has become the Golden Child and should now transition to a parish.

Let us not be petty, let us not be shortsighted, let us not be behoved by “bad mind”, for the fact is there are lots of lessons to be learned and transplanted to other municipalities, as Portmore has shown that the plans we had for Local Government to be an engine for development have worked. Now it’s time to transplant these successes to other municipal bodies and achieve the same thing for the rural town and make them become urbanised.

The conclusion of the matter, everything being heard, is Portmore becoming a parish is destiny.