THE TIRED, repetitive reasoning of Delroy Chuck's column was again evident in his January 30 piece entitled 'The illusion of politics.' In it, Chuck takes his familiar, wild swings at his favourite targets the supposed redistributive state in Jamaica and the PNP's professed commitment to the "lost cause of socialism." But to suggest that Jamaica suffers from either is, to put it plainly, laughable.
Notwithstanding the PNP's rhetoric, no objective observer could possibly say that Jamaica's economic policy reflects a commitment to serious wealth redistribution or socialism. In fact, the distribution of wealth in Jamaica remains amongst the most inequitable in the world, the debt incurred over the past two decades overwhelms the government's budget, and Washington Consensus neoliberal reforms (trade liberalisation, de-regulation, public sector cutbacks, privatisation, currency devaluation) are very well entrenched. Thus, Chuck's argument that "economics has to triumph over politics" is in some ways counter-factual it already has, in the sense that ideological debate is now nothing more than rhetorical and, apart from the political spoils, the macro-economic course that Jamaica is on will not change significantly following the next election, regardless of whether the PNP or the JLP forms the government. This last point has been repeatedly stated by economists in Jamaica.
Chuck's incessant claims that Jamaica must escape the "evils" of socialism diverts attention away from the failure of the Washington Consensus programme reforms that his party embarked upon in the 1980s, and which (rhetoric aside) both parties seem firmly committed to. These reforms have had devastating impacts on the competitiveness of Jamaica's agricultural and manufacturing sectors, the access to and quality of public goods like education, and the economic prospects and social conditions of the poor.
A more constructive economic debate leading up to the election would begin with the recognition that the state in Jamaica today is weak and severely constrained by debt and global forces, and then ask how it can play a role, in the face of these limitations, in improving the lives of the poor majority.
