One year ago on September 3, Jamaica made political history. The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), under Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness, secured an unprecedented third consecutive general-election victory. Yet the victory came with a warning embedded in the numbers.

The JLP won 35 of the 63 parliamentary seats, but its margin was significantly reduced from the 49 seats it secured in 2020. More tellingly, voter turnout remained below 40 per cent. The message was clear: Jamaicans returned the JLP to office, but not with a blank cheque.

One year into this historic third term, therefore, the appropriate question is not whether the Government has done anything — it certainly has. The more important question is whether it has done enough, and whether it is moving with the urgency that a third-term Administration should.

The achievements deserve recognition. The Government’s strongest argument remains its record on economic management and employment. Jamaica’s unemployment rate has remained exceptionally low, with the latest official figures putting it below 4 per cent. Inflation, while still painful for households, has also remained relatively contained. The Bank of Jamaica reported headline inflation of 4.3 per cent in April 2026. These are not insignificant achievements in a country that has historically struggled with high unemployment, fiscal instability, and inflationary pressures.

The Administration can also point to continued progress in reducing violent crime. The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s latest statistics show that murders in 2026 remain below the corresponding period in 2025. This does not mean that Jamaica has solved its crime problem — far from it — but sustained reductions in murders are worth acknowledging. For families who have lost loved ones to violence, every life saved matters more than any political statistic.

Infrastructure is another area in which the Administration has maintained momentum. Its proposed transformational infrastructure programme is intended to address chronic congestion, improve connectivity, and support economic activity, particularly along the north coast. The challenge, however, is to ensure that infrastructure becomes more than ribbon-cutting politics. Jamaicans need roads that remain usable, reliable water supplies, efficient public transportation, and infrastructure that works outside the major urban centres.

And then there was Hurricane Melissa. It would be unfair to assess the first year of the third Holness Administration without acknowledging that its first months were dominated by one of the most devastating natural disasters in Jamaica’s modern history. The Government has moved from emergency relief into reconstruction, including shelter assistance, business recovery, infrastructure restoration, and support for farmers and fishers. By March, the Government reported spending approximately $67 billion on relief and restoration efforts.

That response deserves credit. But disaster recovery also creates the Administration’s greatest test: Can Jamaica rebuild better instead of simply rebuilding what was destroyed?

The weaknesses are harder to ignore, and the economy presents the first major contradiction. Jamaica may have strong macroeconomic indicators, but macroeconomic stability is not the same thing as household prosperity. The economy contracted sharply following Hurricane Melissa, with gross domestic product declining 4.1 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026 after a 7.1 per cent contraction in the previous quarter. For the ordinary Jamaican, the question is not whether debt ratios are improving or whether international institutions praise fiscal management. It is whether wages are keeping pace with the cost of living, whether housing is affordable, whether electricity is manageable, and whether young people can find meaningful work.

This is when the Government needs to become more aggressive. The JLP has spent years establishing itself as the party of economic competence. Its third term must now be the period in which that competence is translated into broader prosperity. Growth that does not sufficiently reach households eventually becomes statistics without social meaning.

Crime presents another challenge. The downward trend in murders is encouraging, but Jamaica cannot define success merely as having fewer murders than the previous year. Citizens want safer communities, faster justice, greater confidence in the police, and a justice system capable of dealing with cases before they become forgotten statistics. The Administration must, therefore, move beyond crime reduction towards a broader programme of crime prevention, justice reform, youth intervention, and community renewal.

Then there is governance. A third-term Government must be especially careful about complacency. Political longevity can produce institutional confidence, but it can also produce political fatigue. Concerns surrounding transparency, accountability, and the management of public resources cannot be dismissed as opposition politics. Indeed, the Government’s own handling of hurricane-recovery resources demonstrates why accountability must remain central. The prime minister has acknowledged administrative weaknesses in inventory management following the hurricane while defending the broader spending programme.

The lesson should be straightforward: In a crisis, speed matters — but so does documentation, transparency, and accountability. The Cabinet now needs a performance test.

This brings us to the question of a Cabinet shuffle. A reshuffle should not be undertaken merely to create political excitement or reward loyalty. After one year, the prime minister has enough information to assess which ministers are driving the Government’s agenda and which ministries are struggling to translate policy into results. He should consider moving ministers whose portfolios have consistently attracted public dissatisfaction, bureaucratic delays, or weak policy execution. At the same time, ministers who have demonstrated competence should be given greater authority and clearer targets.

The test should, therefore, be brutally simple: Who is delivering? Who is communicating? Who is solving problems? And who is merely occupying office?

The September 2025 Cabinet was already adequately reconfigured after the election. Any further reshuffle should be less about changing faces and more about changing performance. Indeed, Prime Minister Holness should consider introducing publicly measurable ministerial performance targets. Jamaicans should be able to know what each ministry promised, what has been achieved, what has been delayed and why. A third-term Government should have little fear of such transparency.

The bigger challenge is governing after the victory. Perhaps the greatest danger facing the JLP is not the Opposition (Do we even have a serious one?), it is complacency. The 2025 election result was historic, but it was hardly overwhelming. The JLP secured 55.5 per cent of the parliamentary seats against the PNP, while only about 40 per cent of registered voters participated. That should humble the Government.

A third term should not be interpreted as a mandate to govern on autopilot. It should be understood as an extraordinary opportunity and an extraordinary responsibility. Jamaica needs a Government that can simultaneously maintain fiscal discipline and improve household prosperity; reduce murders while confronting the deeper causes of violence; build roads while fixing water; attract investment while creating better jobs; and reconstruct after Melissa while preparing for the next climate disaster.

Most importantly, it needs a Government that listens. One year later, the JLP has enough achievements to defend its record, but enough weaknesses to justify a serious course correction. The Administration has demonstrated that it can win elections. It must now demonstrate that it can use an unprecedented third term to transform the quality of governance.

The next four years should not be about proving the JLP deserved to win again. That argument ended on September 3, 2025. The argument that matters now is whether Jamaicans will believe, by 2030, that giving the JLP a third term was worth it.

Oneil madden is a lecturer of academic literacy and French. He is also a PhD candidate in didactics and linguistics (French/English) at Clermont Auvergne University, France. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or maddenoniel@yahoo.com.

Oneil Madden