PRIME Minister Andrew Holness has scoffed at claims by the People’s National Party (PNP) that paternity for the economic stability the country now enjoys belongs to the Opposition party.

“Yes, your name was called, but it is another Golding [former Prime Minister Bruce Golding] that is the father,” quipped Holness as he made his contribution to the 2025/26 Budget Debate in Parliament on Thursday.

In his contribution to the debate last week Opposition spokesman on finance Julian Robinson said the Government was attempting to erase the history of the PNP in plotting the present macroeconomic stability.

“It was under the last PNP Administration that the heavy lifting was done to secure the macroeconomic foundation that exists today. They would have us believe that they single-handedly fixed the economy — as if history started in 2016,” said Robinson.

He insisted that the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) “cannot claim paternity for fixing the economy. If they try to claim paternity we would call it a jacket, and if you did the DNA… the DNA would say, ‘A nuh fi dem pickney, a PNP pickney’.”

In his response Holness said no one on his side of the House has ever said the PNP did not contribute to the national effort to restructure and reform the economy.

Holness pointed out that as recently as November last year, at the launch of the Government’s Next Chapter policy pivot, he expressed gratitude to former PNP President Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, and former Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips, among others, for their work in getting the economic fundamentals right.

But Holness charged that the deep-rooted fiscal problems the country faced were based on the bad policies instituted in the previous 18 years by the PNP Administration.

“Indeed, we fathered the deep structural reforms needed to break the PNP-created debt crisis. The debt inherited from the PNP had reached unsustainable levels, and it was under the leadership of Bruce Golding and Audley Shaw, supported by enlightened and patriotic members of the private sector and reasonable unions, that the first structured debt exchange was engineered, JDX.

“This pulled Jamaica from the brink of another financial collapse by successfully reducing Jamaica’s interest costs, extending debt maturity, improving debt sustainability and giving the country the credibility to approach the IMF,” Holness said.

“We put in place the Fiscal Responsibility Framework (FRF) which enhanced transparency, accountability, and reporting on public finances and placed limits on the fiscal deficit. This is the basis for the fiscal rule legislation and all the other reforms we have today,” said Holness.

The prime minister pointed out that the JLP took tough steps to divest loss-making public sector entities such as the Sugar Company and Air Jamaica which racked up huge debt and operating losses, “carried over from the 18½ years of poor management and lack of superintendence of public sector bodies by the PNP Government”.

According to Holness, even when the JLP was in Opposition it did its part in supporting and developing many nascent measures, including working assiduously on every piece of legislation required to meet International Monetary Fund (IMF) timelines.

“We were a responsible and constructive father, even in Opposition,” he declared.

“While we acknowledge the work of the PNP in the national effort across administrations, any political credit they should get for contributing to the solution is totally wiped out because they are the ones whose bad policy caused the problem in the first place,” charged Holness.

“True to their bipolar nature, the PNP wants to claim paternity after causing the mother — the people — so much hardship,” said Holness.

The prime minister charged that the Opposition has, in the recent past, criticised the Government for its policies but now wants to claim paternity for improvements in the economy.

“This reminds me of the classic tale of what we call in Jamaica the ‘wutliss’ father who causes the mother so much pain, and then abandons the child, but when the child grows up to be successful, out of the blue they turn up to claim paternity and associate with the success,” said Holness, to much desk banging by Government members in the House.

“The Leader of the Opposition is a man of convenience, flip-flopping between prudence and popularity when it suits him. One minute he disowns the child of fiscal discipline and then the next he claims the child of fiscal discipline.

“The mother remembers the pain of Finsac and the high interest rate policy, the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, and she knows that she cannot trust this wutliss man. So she did the DNA test, and the results are in. When it comes to 15-year-old ‘Fiscal Discipline’, PNP, you are not the father,” said Holness to thunderous desk banging from Government members.