Based on years of lived experiences in this country, plus copious and irrefutable evidence, I can reliably imagine what Jamaica would look like under a future People’s National Party (PNP) Administration led by present Opposition leader and PNP President Mark Golding. The future will be the past.

Our 19th parliamentary election will be held this year. For nearly two years I have been asking in this space for Golding to present the PNP’s plan for its time as Government. More Jamaicans, including some whose political navels are planted at 89 Old Hope Road, are now also asking: What would Jamaica look like under a future PNP Administration? Up to the time of writing, there was still no answer from Norman Manley’s party.

The trailer-load of promises made by the PNP to date are, in my view, mere tomfoolery, given the total absence of verifiable data on how they will be fully-funded, specific timelines in which promises will be implemented, credible forecasts on how many Jamaicans will benefit, and, most crucially, how the delivery will affect Jamaica’s current robust macroeconomic state. We must not be tricked.

Lest we forget

Blatant economic mismanagement and recurrent descent into social degeneration are undeniable and conspicuous burdens which the PNP continues to carry on its back. Except for the period January 2012 to February 2016 — when Portia Simpson Miller was prime minister and Dr Peter Phillips, the de factor, prime minister — the PNP’s occupation of Jamaica House has resulted in near total national ruination.

Fact is: One swallow does not a summer make.

Lest we forget, Jamaica’s economy was growing by leaps and bounds in the 60s, before Michael Manley burst on the political scene. Thousands of Jamaicans were bamboozled into believing that Manley had some kind of magic wand which would make life measurably better.

Admittedly, Manley was provided with fertile ground. The woeful inattention of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Administration to considerable social disaffection and discrimination of the majority black population was Manley’s open sesame. He understandably took full advantage of the massive social societal disaffections. “Betta muss come,” he promised.

What most Jamaicans got was economic ruination. Consequently, Manley’s very admirable social agenda flatlined. Massive internal incompetence in Manley’s Administration, rampant corruption, oil crises, interference from foreign powers, and a corrosive belief by the PNP that a majority of Jamaicans would long-termly choose socialist diatribe over the hunger pains in their stomachs, caused the ultimate demise of Manley’s regime.

Golding needs to prove to Jamaicans that the future will not be the past. Until then, Jamaicans have an obligation to assume that a future PNP administration will be a mere repetition of horrific times past when the PNP was in Jamaica House.

Under Manley, those past times were severe and dreadful. “Socialist purity,” think the Pickersgill Committee was a prerequisite for gaining decent work. Journalists and media houses that did not imbibe the socialist cool-aid were hounded, and strenuous attempts were made to control their economic subsistence. Ordinary Jamaicans, who dared to speak unfavourably of Manley’s policies, were branded as reactionaries — decoded, read traitors.

“Shortages, outages, and stoppages,” think Edward Seaga, were the rule and not the exception. Jamaica could not pay her bills and we were the laughing stock of the region. Then, Jamaica owed money to almost every Jack and Jill, including countries with severely repressive regimes. Iraq’s was one.

Frequent devaluation of the local currency, biting austerity, suffocating inflation, rampant crime, capital flight, and the mass migration of many of our best and brightest — some 20,000, after Manley’s infamous “five flights a day” ultimatum — were the order of the day. While Manley and the PNP were at Jamaica House in the 70s. Jamaica was literally brought to her knees.

Edward Seaga and the JLP saved Jamaica from the corrosive tentacles of socialism. He repaired and restocked the national treasury. Seaga implemented a raft of social programmes and interventions which sought to, among other things, provide sustained opportunities for a wide cross section of Jamaicans, particularly the youth. Seaga did a lot to restore good relations with our major trading partners. Manley continued this in 1989-1992.

Luck and events are substantial determiners of political success and greatness. Recall Napoleon Bonaparte famously quipped, “I know he’s a good general, but is he lucky?” Seaga was not lucky.

Additionally, natural events impeded many of Seaga’s economic and social repairs. Recall the country-wide devastation of Hurricane Gilbert, on September 12, 1988. Gilbert then was the most powerful cyclone since such records were kept.

Consider this: “The devastating hurricane has left more than 90,000 people without a roof over their heads. Many are now at disaster centres which were set up across the island, while others are staying with relatives and friends whose houses were either unscathed or not badly damaged.

Flooded buildings, blown-down houses, blown-off roofs, and damaged roads dominated reports relayed to the then Office of Disaster Preparedness (ODP) during and after the passage of the savage hurricane which affected the rich, the poor, and the needy. Because of the widespread destruction of the island’s communications network, very few reports have come in from rural Jamaica. According to reports from southern Clarendon, the homes of some 10,000 people had been transformed into temporary rivers on the day of the hurricane after their roofs were ripped off by the strong winds. This according to
The Gleaner of Tuesday, September 13, 2024.

To Seaga’s eternal credit, he spearheaded the return of especially basic services to most Jamaicans in record time. Seaga received plaudits in local, regional, and international media. By mid-November 1988, Jamaica was fully reopened for business. Seaga’s favourability shot-up and he was advised to call the general election in early December 1988. He delayed. The elections were held in February 1989 and the JLP was kicked out of Jamaica House.

Manley took up residence again at Jamaica House, this time minus his Kariba suit. He publicly committed to pursuing capitalist policies when he visited Washington, DC, USA, in 1990. See The Economist of March 13, 1997. The worst thing a country can do is entrust socialists with the implementation of capitalist polices. They simply don’t have the skills.

It bears repeating, Jamaicans have an obligation to assume that a future PNP Administration will be a mere repetition of past times when the PNP were at Jamaica House, until we can be rationally convinced otherwise.

Manley’s second sojourn at Jamaica House was marred by rising crime, in particular murders, high inflation, stifling corruption, and lack of economic growth. In an effort to convince Washington, DC, that they were reformed and could be trusted the Manley Administration made matters considerably worse when it commenced the fast-tracking of neoliberal economic policies.

Seaga had warned Manley, in Parliament, that he was going too far, too fast. Manley heard but certainly did not listen.

Like he did in the run-up to the 1972 General Election, Manley had made a trailer-load of promises prior to the 1989 parliamentary poll. During the 1989 campaign, for example, Manley declared in Half-Way-Tree square that, “God will judge me if the cess on university education was not removed.” Shortly after Manley won, he told the country that the cess could not be removed.

God-awful times

Common sense, years of experience, and mountains of evidence dictate that Jamaicans assume that a future PNP Administration will be a facsimile of past times when the PNP was at Jamaica House. We have an obligation to make that assumption until we can be rationally convinced otherwise.

“Better muss come” crashed like Manley’s crash programme scheme in the 70s. When he retired in March 1992, P J Patterson took the reins. Patterson sought his own mandate in a general election held on March 30, 1993. “Black Man Time Now” was Patterson’s political opium. Many got addicted. By the time they regained their senses, Jamaica’s economy, especially, was in tatters.

The Patterson Administration applied a veritable wrecking ball to the Jamaican economy. Some 45,000 small- and medium-sized businesses folded during P J Patterson and Omar Davies’ scorched-earth economic era. Companies which employed hundreds of Jamaicans went under, among them Goodyear Tyre Company, West Indies Glass, Homelectrix, Workers’ Bank, Raymars Furniture, Charley’s Windsor House, Thermo Plastics, Berec Batteries, Century National Bank, Crown Eagle Insurance, Crown Eagle Insurance Commercial Bank, Island Life Insurance Company, American Life Insurance Company (ALICO), Eagle Merchant Bank, and Ecotrends. Mutual Life (a company that operated locally for over 100 years), and Time Store, a name-brand family business in this country were gobbled up by the massive waves of economic mismanagement. Our black entrepreneurial class was almost decimated in the 90s by the cruel and inhumane high interest rate policies of the Patterson Administration. His finance minister, Dr Omar Davies, I believe, may well go down in our political history as the worst. In my view, he had only one distinction as finance minister — he got everything wrong with regard to the management of our national purse and made crises of own his creation, considerably, worse.

Some may say that my assessment is harsh, but what is truly harsh, heartbreaking, and tragic is the absolute devastation visited upon thousands of Jamaicans by the disastrous economic policies pursued by the Patterson Administration. Many Jamaicans have never recovered, and some have not lived to tell the tale. Twenty reportedly committed suicide.

Patterson was prime minister for just under 14½ years. He won four straight general elections. In total, the PNP spent just over 18½ years as the sitting Administration between 1989, when a rebranded Michael Manley came back to power in February 1989, and when the PNP was booted from office on September 3, 2007 by a rejuvenated Bruce Golding and the JLP. Political scholars posit that unless a political party can govern for at least three cycles, 15 years in our case, at minimum and/or longer, it cannot make transformative changes. The PNP got brawta, as we say in local parlance. And Patterson got brawta. What did most Jamaicans get for entrusting power to the PNP for close to 20 years? Most Jamaicans got poorer, weaker, and less respected. Our economy was on life support when the PNP presided for 18½ years. Whereas the vast majority of Caribbean economies grew by an average of between 3 per cent and 5 per cent, ours nosedived.

Not child’s play

We cannot afford to treat our politics like the children’s game of hide-and-seek, in which one or more players hide and the others have to look for them. We cannot legitimately recite the “if mi did know…” cultural excuse any longer, when economic and especially social dread is meted out to us by inept administrations. We live in the Information Age; those who want to know have information at the click of button. We have a duty to know, if not even for ourselves, certainly for our children.

Apart from his declaration that he is a socialist, Golding needs to tell Jamaicans what Jamaica will look like with a future PNP Administration. Prime Minister Andrew Holness recently showed us what Jamaica will look like if the JLP is re-elected. Governments in-waiting, like incumbents, have a duty to deliver their plans long before a general election. It’s put up or shut up time for the PNP.

Garfield Higgins is an educator and journalist. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.

Former People’s National Party president and Prime Minister Michael Manley.

SEAGA… did a lot to restore good relations with our major trading partners after the Manley Administration

Portia Simpson Miller

Former Finance Minister Omar Davies

PHILLIPS… de fact prime minister

PATTERSON… took over from Manley

Garfield Higgins