“I know what it is not to have lunch money, but nobody in the world would ever know because even though I was poor, I was proud. So when I say, I love the poor, but I hate poverty,’ you understand what I mean.”

Prime Minister Andrew Holness made this and related utterances at a meeting of Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) parliamentarians, councillors, and other party supporters in St James recently. Recall that at this gathering the date of February 26, 2024 was set for the holding of our 17th local government election since universal adult suffrage.

People’s National Party (PNP) General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell spewed this and related diatribe on the hustings recently in St Mary: “If you did love poor people you woulda never demolish the house of poor people over Portmore. If you did love poor people then you wouldn’t lock we up inna Covid and mek wi couldn’t come out and get no food. And give one deggeh, deggeh (single) $10,000 for a whole year when people ah suffer. If you did love poor people you wouldn’t tell taxi man seh dem haffi put car seat innah dem something fi pickney in order to carry pickney in taxi when dem a run pon road. If you did love poor people you wouldn’t give teachers 20 per cent and give yuh ministers 250 per cent. Yuh nuh love people.”

This was the PNP’s ‘counteraction’, as we say in the streets. This attempt at neutralisation of the prime minister’s declaration is most revealing and frightening.

Dayton Campbell

Last Sunday, in my The Agenda piece, I said that the Opposition leader and PNP President Mark Golding and his party encapsulated “an unusable past”. Based on some very strongly worded responses my observation evidently made many Comrades angry. But I did not have to wait long for more proof to present itself.

Dr Campbell, in the mentioned tirade, like his president, seems to be endorsing if not promoting squatting. Recall this: “Speaking at the same meeting, Opposition Leader Mark Golding told residents that under the law, they have a right to the property that they now occupy. He said the People’s National Party respects the laws of the country and the rights of property owners. ‘Many of you are property owners in your own rights. You may not have a legal title yet, but you have been living on the property and you have invested in your property far beyond the 12 years prescribed by law,’ Golding noted.” (The Gleaner, April 23, 2022)

Golding said he respected the rights of property owners, but seemingly gives very little currency to this.

Consider this: ‘Demolition looms on captured land — Holness pledges to smash illegal homes, drive out St Catherine gang’. The Gleaner news item of October 6, 2022, said among other things: “The Government is cracking down on a criminal gang accused of a land grab on the outskirts of Clifton, St Catherine, and will today start the demolition of 30 illegally erected houses.

“The lands, which fall within the Government’s Greater Bernard Lodge Development Plan, will be formalised and owners given titles, but criminals have captured a section designated for agriculture, Prime Minister Andrew Holness told lawmakers Wednesday.

“ ‘We’re not an evil Government. We are not an unthinking and uncaring Government. We care, so after we have demolished the incomplete structures, then we will engage a process to deal with the structures that are complete and occupied,” Holness said in the House of Representatives, hours before the demolition was slated to begin.

“They will not be allowed to stand! This will be a watershed moment in Jamaica. It is not the first time that the Government of Jamaica has moved to rectify illegal settlements, but it is the first time that a settlement, an illegal settlement sponsored by a criminal gang, will be treated with,” he added.”

When the president of the PNP tells the country that his team is okay with squatting, it is reasonable to believe them. Squatting, according to our laws, is illegal. Would Golding and Dr Campbell have similar prescriptions if they owned the properties which had been taken over by squatters? These men who have benefited greatly from many years of schooling at highly rated and respected institutions of learning promote ignorance.

Ignorance and dependency fuel socialism. No matter how socialists spin it, and no matter how hard they try to disguise themselves these days with nomenclatures such as progressives and democratic left, socialism has failed globally. The deadly trail of disasters left by socialist parties that have formed administrations worldwide cannot be successfully hid under a bushel.

Dependency in the form of a trophy-like trait is a millstone which continues to weigh heavily on our collective necks. In many respects this is a consequence of the cruel experiment with Michael Manley’s brand of democratic socialism in the 70s. Cogent scholarship prove that dependency was promoted, especially, tacitly so, in the 70s.

‘We ah sufferah’ was romanticised as a badge of distinction especially in the 1970s. For detractors who love to invent straw men, I am not here talking about incapacitated individuals and/or those down on their lucks. I am talking about able-bodied people being deliberately and strategically influenced to accept ‘let off something’ (handouts) as their permanent state.

Dr Campbell castigates the Holness Administration for instituting lockdowns during the novel coronavirus pandemic. So Jamaica should have disregarded the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and local medical experts? What idiocy?

Most countries in the world had periods of lockdown. Dr Campbell knows this. This is ignorance on steroids.

Some will, of course, conveniently, say: “Cho, is just political jesting.” I disagree. These utterances should be treated as harbingers. They are not jokes.

Dr Campbell, in his harangue, castigates the Administration saying the ministers took “250% and gave the teachers 20%” The fact is some public sector workers in the recent compensation review received some of the highest increases in the last 45 years.

Consider these truths enunciated by Prime Minister Andrew Holness: “The fact is that, before the review our wages in GDP (gross domestic product) was somewhere in the region of about 9.5 per cent. Now, it’s about 11.5 per cent, so it has increased. That means the Government is not just budgeting but paying out more cash to people.

“The wage bill has increased by over $100 billion more. So, where did that money go? It is going into the workers’ pockets,” said Holness.

“The structure of the increase is meant to increase wage levels generally. Even the Opposition I have heard say it, that the people who were getting the lowest pay are the ones who got the biggest increase. People at the top have also got sizeable increases and there are concerns about what is happening in the middle,” he added.” (
Jamaica Observer, May 3, 2023)

There is another particularly loud irony in Dr Campbell’s diatribe which should not escape the sanitising heat of sunlight. He seemed to have forgotten that under former PNP administrations, stinging austerity was imposed on public sector workers with biting regularity.

Dr Campbell conveniently has forgotten the bad old days when teachers, police, doctors, numerous other categories of workers had to resort to frequent sit-ins, go-slows, wild-cat and national withdrawal of their service to get the attention of PNP administrations. Even after tremendous dislocation and displacements, in most cases public sectors workers could only get a measly 2 per cent or maximum 5 per cent increase in their salaries.

I remember a famous address to the nation in which former Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr Peter Phillips frankly told the workers, try as they may, strike as they wish, “you cannot bruk empty shop”; meaning the country was not only on her knees but also on her face financially and just could not afford another ‘red cent’ of increases to them.

Here is the loudest irony of all. Golding and the 14 parliamentarians on his side and all PNP councillors swiftly accepted the increases. No one held a gun to their heads and told them take it or else.

As we get ready to cast our ballots in the local government elections, we should be very suspicious of those who peddle pseudo justifications for breaking our laws, and utterances which are high on emotions but precious little content; for that is how we decipher the truth behind their propaganda.

What happens to a political party when it is flung into a predicament of no ideas? It resorts to emotional appeals, devoid of policy content and logic. We must not be caught in this trap.

Garfield Higgins

Garfield Higgins is an educator, journalist, and a senior advisor to the minister of education and youth. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.