Why is the PNP fighting the 10-point plan so much?
One definition of an economist is somebody who sees something happen in practice and wonders if it will work in theory. — Ronald Reagan
The critical conduits of political, social and economic power in Jamaica are rapidly being monopolised by a ‘happy few’ who are generously aided by modern-day equivalents of absentee plantation owners. Their raison d’être is to continually inject into the consciousness of the majority a putrid philosophy that “nuh better nuh deh” — there are no choices but theirs.
Happily, these “mind managers” have made a fatal miscalculation. “No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come,” said Victor Hugo, esteemed French writer and poet.
The majority of us are tired of a politics that is a veritable black hole. We are ready for a politics which gives us something sustainable that we can feel in our pockets and see on our dinner tables long after the final ballot is counted on election night and the victor and vanquished are announced.
The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), to its credit, seems to get it. The policies of this Administration are a tax albatross around our necks. The weight of the Administration’s gargantuan tax necklace is doing damage to our economic spinal cord. Paralysis is almost a certainty on the current national economic trajectory.
Last week I listened and watched with much interest as People’s National Party (PNP) spokespersons outlined what they said were the bases on which the JLP’s 10-point plan was unworkable. The nucleus of their objection is that the JLP’s plan will cause national bankruptcy.
Dr Peter Phillips, our minister of finance, says the JLP’s plan will cost some $100 billion. Is this another example of what George W Bush called “fuzzy maths”? Recall, Phillips had more than a little difficulty explaining basic calculations related to his stillbirth bank tax on national television not so long ago.
The PNP’s reaction was predictable. Why? I have long argued in this space that one of the multiple Achilles heels of this Administration is its tarpaulin of recycled socialists. I am not fooled by the shedding of the Kariba for Wall Street Brioni suits. Socialists, recycled or not, have a counter-intuitive foundational framework. They believe they are best at deciding and directing how people should spend the money they earn. The consistent result of this flawed formula is the twin-devils of merciless taxation and an incorrigible dependency mentality.
For those and other reasons economic growth is seldom a priority of Socialists. “If Socialists understood economics, they would not be Socialists,” said Friedrich Von Hayek.
The PNP has been in power 23 of the last 27 years. It is laughable that the PNP is seeking to present itself as a party of frugality and motherliness days before a general election. We should not forget that Deacon Ronald Thwaites told us, “The PNP has presided over the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich since slavery.”
While this Administration professes undying love for the poor and downtrodden, it is prepared to fight tooth and nail to prevent beginning teachers, nurses, civil servants, health sector workers, firefighters, members of the security forces, and thousands of other Jamaicans from having additional money in their pockets.
Thousands of Jamaicans are barely able to take care of recurring obligations such as mortgage, rent, bus fare, basic nutrition, purchasing life-saving medicines, and servicing student loans. Relief from personal income tax for those earning up to $1.5 million would make thousands of economic crosses much easier to carry. Some PNP ginnigogs, subliminally posit, “Give us Barabbas!” After over two decades in power the PNP, by any credible calculations, must be assigned the lion’s share of blame for our current low hope and lack of meaningful economic growth reality.
One does not need to have the mathematical prowess of Sir Isaac Newton to do basic calculations. In these times of biting austerity, “every likkle mek a muckle”, as rural folk say. Applied in this context, all additional legal income is a godsend. Most of us have a teacher, nurse, civil servant, or member of the security forces in our immediate and/or extended family. These are some of the occupations/professions that thousands of typically poor Jamaicans use as a ladder to climb out of poverty into the middle class.
The middle class has all but disappeared under this Administration. The reasons are not rocket science. Despite oil prices at a rock-bottom low, the lowest in 15 years, and the favourable alignment of global economic factors to facilitate growth, this Administration has not been able to meaningfully grow the economy.
These statistics from the Planning Institute of Jamaica testify to the failures of the PNP’s 23 years in office from 1989 to 2007 and 2011 to present: See table
YEAR Growth (%)
1989 7.0
1990 6.3
1991 0.5
1992 2.7
1993 2.2
1994 1.9
1995 2.5
1996 -0.2
1997 -1.6
1998 -1.0
1999 1.0
2000 0.9
2001 1.3
2002 1.0
2003 3.5
2004 1.4
2005 1.1
2006 3.0
2007 1.4
From 2011-2014, the economy grew at an average 0.4 per cent under Dr Peter Phillips. The economy grew by 1.5 per cent in the last quarter. The JLP left the economy growing at 1.7 per cent in 2011. This was achieved during the worst global economic recession since the Great Depression of 1929-1939.
The economic catastrophe of the Michael Manley years is ironclad evidence that meaningful economic growth and the PNP are like oil and water: 1970 (11.9%); 1971 (3.0%); 1972 (9.1%); 1973 (1.3%); 1974 (-3.9%); 1975 (-0.3%); 1976 (-6.5%); 1977 (-2.4%); 1978 (0.6%); 1979 (-1.8%); 1980 (-5.7%). As the Americans say, “Do the math!”
(NB: The years 1972 and 1990 were momentum years of the Jamaica Labour Party administrations of former prime ministers Hugh Lawson Shearer and Edward Seaga.)
Meaningful economic growth, as President Obama said, happens when the majority of ordinary folk feel it in their pockets and see it on their dinner tables. This is not happening in Jamaica.
What is the Administration doing with the over US$1 billion in savings from record-low world oil prices? Why are we not seeing countrywide improvements in the social and physical infrastructure of our schools, hospitals, homes for the aged, and children’s homes, for starters, from the oil windfall?
While the Administration takes credit for single-digit inflation, which is specifically a ‘happy accident’ of low world oil prices, homelessness has increased by 26 per cent across the island. (
Jamaica Observer, January 14, 2016)
While Prime Minister Simpson Miller boasts of rescuing the economy “from the brink”, the sugar industry has lost 1,250 jobs in the last six months. Some 19,000 Jamaicans in 157 communities, across seven parishes, are now many steps closer to the poor house because of the wrecking of the local sugar industry. With youth unemployment at 34 per cent, we are effectively playing with an amateurish detonator switch.
Andrew Holness’s personal income tax relief proposal for Jamaicans earning up to $1.5 million, sources tell me, is a ‘big-time botheration’, major fear and concern for strategists in Norman Manley’s party. It is not difficult to understand why.
How do we best begin to help rescue thousands of Jamaicans who are drowning economically? We give them a lifeline. The Good Book addresses the point: “Or what man is there of you, whom if his son asks for bread, will he give him a stone?” The PNP would rather give hungry Jamaicans a stone. “It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs,” said Vaclav Havel, former president of Czechoslovakia “and dissident, whose eloquent dissections of Communist rule helped to destroy it in revolutions that brought down the Berlin Wall.” (
New York Times, December 18, 2011)
PNP strategists are on pins and needles because of Holness’s proposal to create a special intergenerational 50- to 60-year mortgage which will make homeownership and payments easier. The JLP has given a commitment to reform the National Housing Trust (NHT), Housing Agency of Jamaica and the Jamaica Mortgage Bank and reduce interest rates on mortgages. Why does the PNP not want this? At present 70 per cent of contributors to the NHT get no housing benefit. This Administration spends $900,000 monthly for maintenance of the Outameni property it used NHT funds to buy — moreso buyout of a connected person’s debt. What benefits are contributors deriving from this wanton waste of public resources? Is the NHT now reserved to deliver bailouts? Some guys, like former PNP government minister Dr Paul Robertson and Lennie Little-White, cannot continue to have such wonderful luck courtesy of NHT funds, and the others of us get all the pain. I take liberties here with Rod Stewart’s hit song,
Some Guys Have All the Luck.
Intergenerational 50- to 60-year mortgage loans are a success in Japan, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, California, and dozens of other places. Does the PNP want us to believe that what is tried and tested elsewhere cannot work in Jamaica? How come?
Holness’s plan would invert the present cruel equation, where most NHT contributors — to use a local analogy — “throw a hand in partner where they never get a draw”. Instead, 70 per cent of contributors fall into the proverbial “alley button wuk fi nuttin” category; a potential 89 per cent of contributors could qualify for a housing benefit.
Why does the PNP hate this idea so much? The answer is simple. The PNP’s dominance in the game of State power is built on keeping the majority poor and dependent on handouts and tomfoolery schemes like Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme [JEEP]. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller needs to understand that poverty and the ‘suffera mentality’ are no longer sexy.
The JLP says it will create a Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation. The PNP suggests this is ‘ginnalship’. Bustamante’s party has committed to immediately restore the benefits of the junior stock market and to grow equity financing for the expansion of small to medium-sized businesses. It is accepted worldwide that massive growth in small businesses is the lifeblood of job creation. The junior stock exchange, introduced by Audley Shaw a few years ago, has resulted in hundreds of jobs for Jamaicans. The PNP scoffs, huffs and puffs. Why does the PNP want to see the demise of this innovation? Is this a case of bad mind? By their fruits we shall know them, say the Holy Scriptures.
The JLP grew the economy by six per cent on average in the 1960s and again in the mid-to-late 1980s. It says it will again reduce transfer taxes, stamp duties, estate taxes, as our economy grows. The PNP would have us believe this is impossible.
Germany’s youth unemployment is seven per cent — the lowest in Europe. Why? This is because of the huge success of their National Apprenticeship Programme. Lufthana German Airlines employs some 1,700 apprentices. (
BBC News, February 10, 2016)
Britain is soon to implement the German Model. Other nations in Europe, Asia and South America are studying the German apprenticeship model. The JLP says it will spearhead a National Apprenticeship Programme, a National Service Programme, revitalise town centres, and prioritise capital investments in water. The PNP intimates that the country does not have money to achieve these objectives.
The PNP would have us believe that Holness’s 10-point plan will bankrupt the country. But, how come these major PNP money scandals did not bankrupt Jamaica? Shell Waiver (1991) $29.5 million, approximately $68 million in today’s dollar value; Zinc (1989) $500 million, approximately $1.3 billion today; Furniture (1991) $10.6 million, approximately $35 million; Public sector salaries (1998) $60 million, approximately $137 million today; NetServ (2001) $220 million, approximately $785 million today; Operation Pride/NHDC (1997-present) $5.5 billion projected, approximately $10.8 billion today. This totals $6.32 billion (approximately $13.3 billion today).
How come the millions spent on SUVs for government ministers, the $7 billion and 13-million man-hours [conservative estimates by the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica] of lost production due to the carelessness of this Administration in the preparation for and management of the chikungunya outbreak did not bankrupt the country?
How come the millions spent on near 300 government consultants has not caused the economy to fold?
Billions have been wasted. Here are two recent examples: “The Auditor General is reporting the NHT has failed to realise any return on three major projects in the past five to 10 years that cost taxpayers more than $2 billion,” (
The Gleaner, April 21, 2015) and “AG: Government did not receive value for money in an almost $9-billion project implemented by the Housing Agency of Jamaica”. (The Gleaner, November 11, 2015) Did the economy crash?
Now that the JLP has proposed a plan that will cause the majority of ordinary folk to get some tangible benefits from their blood, sweat and tears, the PNP’s leadership is enraged and seems about to have a brain aneurysm. Country people in their philosophical genius say, “Tom drunk, but Tom nuh fool.”
Simpson Miller said recently, “It’s time politicians realise that they cannot fool the Jamaican people.” She is absolutely right. That is why a critical mass no longer wants to be slaves to the seemingly omnipotent one-arm bandit policies of the PNP that have brought destitution.
Last time I checked, our dollar had plunged to $121.57 to US$1. The actual value of the Jamaican dollar is US$0.008.
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you. — Pericles
Garfield Higgins in an educator and journalist. Send comments to the Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.