One night a police officer, while on patrol, comes upon a man feverishly searching under a street light.

“Did you lose something?” the officer queried.

“Yes, I lost my bunch of keys. I am looking for my house keys,” the man volunteered.

The police officer then joins the search. After 10 minutes of searching they did not find anything.

“Sir, where were you standing when your keys went missing?” the police officer, inquired.

“I was standing across the street,” the man replied.

“Then, why on Earth are we looking here?” quizzed the police officer.

“Because it’s dark across the street, but here, there is a street light,” the man responded, unconfidently.

This story has several meanings, but in general it highlights the propensity of people to search for solutions in situations and places which are most convenient to them. In so doing, the truth, real problems are not addressed and/or found, and neither are the real solutions.

This parable, yes, not only Jesus used parables, is a metaphor for flawed reasoning, or what some psychologists call “stinking thinking”.

Personal comfort is the priority here, not real effectiveness. Comfortable mediocrity is king.

Jamaica has several Achilles heels. These big weaknesses, among other things, have stifled meaningful and sustained progress for decades. Long-standing vulnerabilities, some quite fixable, if we only had the political will, are a large part of the reason that we have experienced anaemic economic growth since the mid-80s.

Some among us, including individuals who are well-heeled, well-credentialled, and/or wear shiny robes can — like the man in the mentioned parable — continue to search in the wrong places for those crucial keys. Or they can choose to come to their senses and begin to act rationally, like the police officer, and in so doing join hands and hearts with well-thinking Jamaicans as we identify and implement sustained solutions from the right places.

This choice will hasten Jamaica’s progression in becoming “the place of choice to live, work, raise families, and do business”.

Jamaica has to embrace additional, new, rational, and sometimes inconvenient local and international best practices. The keys to Jamaica’s success do exist. Jamaica can achieve developed country status if all of us focus on the right things.

STOP MAJORING IN MINORS

One of Jamaica’s long-standing Achilles heel is we have too many individuals in high and low places who spend inordinate amounts of time majoring in minors. They miss the big picture every time.

Predictably, I see some, including individuals who should know better owing to their precise disciplines, belly-aching about the size of the Cabinet in particular, and the executive in general.

I see some on social media, and in traditional media too who may not know better, kicking up a lot of dust about some of the ministries. These debates, as I see it, are distractions and a total misuse of national focus. They happen every time an Administration commences its time at the wheel.

As I see it, the primary focus of well-thinking Jamaicans should be on timely deliverables by the ministers and their political apparatuses. At minimum, at the six-month mark, those ministers who do not ‘turn any butter’, as rural folks say, meaning produce no measurable results which materially improve the lives of thousands of especially ordinary Jamaicans, should be put on probation.

And, after a calendar year, ministers and the political directorate which they lead that fail to produce meaningful results which materially improve the lives of thousands of especially ordinary Jamaicans should be sent packing from the front benches.

I am not angered one bit by the salaries and benefits that ministers and related get. I said here many years ago that we must recruit the best and brightest people to serve in the political arena and the civil service. And we also must pay our best and brightest very well in keeping with the resources of the national purse. I stand by that pronouncement. It is imbecilic to believe that top-quality people are going to work for peppercorn salaries and benefits.

The politicians are now at a point at which they are receiving decent salaries consistent with the resources in the national cash box. Those in the political arena who maintain that their salaries are still too meagre and also claim that they can get better pay, etc, abroad, should go and take those better-paying jobs overseas, rather than bellyache. As the late British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said: “No one forced any of us to take these jobs.”

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness is the captain of the ship. If the ship is taking in water, well-thinking Jamaicans must hold him accountable.

Inept ministers blame civil servants. If ministers are failing to produce material results, which are making the lives of especially thousands of ordinary Jamaicans better in a sustained manner, then Holness is falling down on job. The prime minister’s performance, or lack thereof, is a direct measure of the success or failure of the signature policies of his Administration. However we slice or dice it, the primary duties of Jamaica’s prime minister, primus inter pares, meaning first among equals, are two-fold. First and foremost, our prime minister has a non-negotiable duty to defend Jamaica’s interests at home and aboard. Second he has a sacrosanct duty to do all that is humanly possible to improve the condition of Jamaicans.

In the recent general election, 412,668 Jamaicans voted for the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and Holness, while 401,435 voted for the People’s National Party (PNP) and Mark Golding. Jamaicans — counting those who did not vote — are expecting material and sustained results from both.

WHY THE PNP LOST, AGAIN?

On the matter of general election results, the PNP, understandably, is still licking its wounds on account of its third-consecutive defeat. The rays of the sun are dimmed at 89 Old Hope Road. Gloom reigns.

I hear various reasons being put forward as to why the PNP was rejected for a third-straight time. Some of the explanations are akin to the reasoning and behaviour of the man in the mentioned parable. I won’t repeat what I think are flawed reasons here.

As I see it, the Mark Golding-led PNP lost because for nearly five years it searched in the wrong place for the keys to Jamaica House. Golding and his lieutenants spent far too much time spewing political bile and far too little spreading a message of a better and brighter future for Jamaica with the PNP at the helm.

After three years of criss-crossing Jamaica and listening to the people, as the PNP said it had carefully done, Golding failed to provide viable answers to five critical questions. Recall, I posed these questions here several times over three years:

1) Where are his new and/or better ideas on how to grow the Jamaican economy faster?

2) Where are his new and/or better ideas to remedy the long-standing matters of social decline?

3) Where are his new and/or better ideas to fix the choking issue of major crimes, and murder in particular?

4) Where are his new and/or better ideas to better remedy the long-standing challenges in education?

5) Where are his new and/or better ideas to cauterise the Herculean problems associated with squatting, and insufficient access to affordable and decent housing? We need to be convinced that the Opposition’s ideas are ‘fundable’.

As I see it, the failure of Golding and his handlers to produce verified/fundable answers to these critical questions constitute the primary reason that the PNP was defeated, again. Instead of producing verified answers, the PNP trapped itself into a grand deflection/diversion and the uncertified statutory declarations of Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

CIRCUS-LIKE ERRORS

When the PNP could not ignore the obvious failure of their trump card tactic, this in the final weeks before Election Day, it resorted to a circus-like approach, as I see it. This was when the wild and unfundable promises burst open like a flood from 89 Old Hope Road. A critical mass was not fooled.

Recall this, for example, ‘PNP says its promised $3.5m income tax threshold is now easier to implement’. The Gleaner item of August 31, 2025 said, among other things: “People’s National Party (PNP) President Mark Golding has declared that financing his party’s ambitious plans to raise the income tax threshold to $3.5 million has become more attainable, following confirmation that the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is on track to hit its long-sought target.” A critical mass was not fooled.

There is a critical mass of Jamaicans today who will not buy into death-of-the-innings promises by politicians. To nullify their circuses, Jamaica urgently needs an independent body to cost manifestos. Fully-costed manifestos must be released to the public no later than 14 days before election day.

I listened keenly to the addresses of the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition on the occasion of the recent swearing-in of Members of Parliament. I did not get the sense that Golding understood that the PNP had lost its third-straight general election. During his address he indulged in an elaborate dodge about how 97,000 more people had voted for the PNP, compared to 2020, and how the PNP had increased it seat count by 100 per cent. Golding might still be drowsy from the outcome of September 3, 2025, but at some point he needs to wake up.

The PNP is still in Opposition, and if the Holness Administration play its cards right, the PNP will remain in Opposition until 2030. It bears repeating: Apply whatever fuzzy maths you want, the PNP lost the election. Apply whatever excuses you want, the PNP lost. The JLP won the popular vote and the most seats.

I listened avidly to the tone and tenor of Golding; Anthony Hylton, the PNP’s legal adviser; and Dr Dayton Campbell, party general secretary, at their post-general election press conference. They came across as experts in the spewing of Rip Van Winkle vibes. Inversion is useless to the PNP, now.

LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE

I am no clairvoyant, but I do take a keen interest in the political happenings of my country. I believe those in the PNP who are still suffering from shock due to the outcome of September 3, 2025 will soon have to awake from their slumber. A leadership challenge in the PNP is coming in 2026/7, I believe.

As I see it, by that time, those who have said they wish to lead the PNP and/or those who hanker quietly after the top job in Norman Manley’s party will realise that their political fortune and ambitions are being choked to death by a president who will be 65 when the next general election is due.

Holness will be 58. Politics today is a younger man’s game. Look around the world today, but for a few exceptions, younger and younger national leaders are being voted into office.

There is the matter of money too. Those who invest in a political party do so primarily because they see a realistic chance that the party they invest in will take home the bacon. The PNP is suffering from an acute shortage of pork, according to several sources.

As I see it, Golding is a lame-duck president. He does not have much in the way of political patronage to distribute. Here is a reality of political gravity. Leaders who do not have much in the way of patronage to distribute cannot rely on the loyalty of those around them. The days of loyalty to ideology, and as a consequence to party leader and party, are dead. The giving out of Opposition spokesperson titles and a few board assignments is pretty much all the patronage at Golding’s disposal.

I believe Golding should have done the smart thing and resigned like his predecessors, former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and the first leader of one of our two major parties not to become prime minister, Dr Peter Phillips. Golding, maybe, is trying to stave off the political carnage that ensued when Simpson Miller and Phillips stood down. But death by a thousand cuts could be much worse.

PULL QUOTE

I did not get the sense that Golding understood that the PNP had lost its third-straight general election. During his address he indulged in an elaborate dodge about how 97,000 more people had voted for the PNP, compared to 2020, and how the PNP had increased it seat count by 100 per cent. Golding might still be drowsy from the outcome of September 3, 2025, but at some point he needs to wake up

PNP President Mark Golding (second left) leads members of his team in singing the party’s anthem during its manifesto launch. (Photo: Naphtali Junior)

Leader of the Opposition Mark Golding addresses the new Parliament after the recent swearing-in exercises. (Photo: Naphtali Junior)