Arnold Bertram, Contributor
THE DECISION of the Patterson administration to defer the objective of a balanced budget influenced the parameters of the Budget Debate and will profoundly affect the rate of economic growth in this fiscal year.
A fiscal deficit means the Government will continue to borrow, and as long as the Government competes with the private sector for the available capital it will always be the preferred client and interest rates will not decline significantly. In a country where the costs of doing business is already much higher than that which obtains within CARICOM, our entrepreneurs will be at a clear disadvantage.
Against this background, it would have been good to hear from the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance the steps being taken to create an environment more conducive to wealth creation and making the Jamaican economy more competitive. Given the high incidence of crime and the manifestations of antisocial behaviour, one would also have expected to hear how the administration plans to transform our human resources and to inculcate a sense of social cohesion and unity of purpose in an increasingly divided and volatile national community.
STRATEGIC LINE
What the nation certainly got was a preview of the strategic line the leaders of both political parties intend to use in the forthcoming general election campaign. Bruce Golding used the opportunity to deliver a well crafted critique of the failures of the Patterson administration and to remind the electorate that the new Prime Minister was a leading member of the executive which has directed the affairs of the country for the last seventeen years. It is also clear that he is not going to allow Portia Simpson Miller to portray herself to the electorate as the only "defender of the poor".
Golding did not score as well in his attempt to understate his historic role as an architect and builder of the political garrison, and Omar Davies' timely reminder certainly put paid to that. Throughout the debate, the inability of Golding and Shaw to propose an alternative to Davies' macroeconomic model certainly reduced the effectiveness of their critique of the Government's economic performance.
Prime Minister Simpson Miller responded by going directly for Golding's political jugular. She denounced him as a flip-flop, reminded him of his own record in the use of public funds and triumphantly announced her basket of goodies for the poor. In the process, she left no doubt as to her intention to mobilise the national constituency of the poor as the platform from which to launch the campaign for her personal political mandate. It is a platform that can certainly win elections. It can also polarise the society and discourage investment.
WE HAVE BEEN THIS WAY BEFORE
There is a significant number of Jamaicans experiencing extreme poverty and it is the responsibility of any elected government to take all practical and sensible measures to alleviate poverty and distress. There is a limit, however, to the welfare pogrammes that an administration up to its neck in debt and presiding over an uncompetitive economy can sustain. Were this not so, Michael Manley would have eradicated poverty long ago.
I would recommend that every Jamaican read Michael Manley's speech to the 38th Annual Conference of the PNP which took place on September 19, 1976. The cheers of the thousands assembled were deafening as Manley recited the list of welfare programmes and interventions to alleviate poverty that had been implemented by his administration. It is unlikely that any other Prime Minister will ever come close to equalling his record of redistributing the country's wealth to the poor.
The platform which won for the PNP a landslide victory in the elections which followed on December 15 simultaneously eroded the party's social base, as was evident with the defection of the middle and upper classes to the JLP. By February 1977 the country was in the grip of an intractable economic crisis, and the debacle of 1980 was just around the corner.
The politics of distribution is always attractive, but there is no alternative to increasing access to a growing economy and promoting social cohesion in our multiracial society. This cannot be achieved with the present level of human resource development.
The fact that the illiteracy rate is now higher than it was at Independence is a clear indicator of the extent of the human resource problem facing the country. Gone are the high schools which emerged in the decade of the 1950s, and which offered quality education in institutions which attracted quality teaching staff and earned the confidence of parents from every social and racial group.
Those parents who can afford it now send their children abroad for secondary and tertiary education and our best teachers follow. Those who cannot exercise this option are forced to devote most of the family income for a second-rate product in which the overwhelming majority of students neither qualify to take nor pass the critical subjects of English, mathematics and information technology. As a consequence, too many of our young people end up in the ranks of the unemployed from which the young men are invariably recruited to a life of crime and antisocial behaviour instead of productive labour.
MAJOR CHALLENGE
In every area where the economy could conceivably grow, the human resource problem constitutes a major challenge. The recently announced project to expand the production of bauxite and alumina in Jamaica will require the importation of technical skill. Perhaps the most explosive indicator of this problem is the fact that in today's labour market, university graduates who enter the police, nursing and teaching professions earn the same daily take-home pay as the better paid household helpers.
Three months ago, the presidential election campaign within the People's National Party attracted the active participation of all social classes. It is clear that in the post-election period not enough has been done to restore the unity of the party and to retain the broad support that was in the process of returning to the party. It is the responsibility of leadership to build and maintain the class alliance without which no national initiative can be successful.
Political leadership has always had more than its fair share of problems and the erosion of the concept of membership in political parties over the last twenty-five years has not helped. Membership means acceptance of the party's programmes, subordination to its discipline and active participation in its activities as an obligation. This concept of membership has now been largely substituted by 'critical support', which accounts for the huge swings in voter support for political parties since the 1980 elections.
MOBILISING THE POOR
In this period, we need to remind ourselves that while it is possible to win elections by mobilising the poor on the basis of programmes which promise an eternity of welfare, the price you pay is the racial and class division which inevitably follows along with a fall-off in investment. In the end, it the poor who suffer most, for their lot can only be improved in a growing economy which gives them opportunity and training.
It is no coincidence that it was in the decade before Independence when the economy grew fastest that the poor made their greatest strides in the history of Jamaica. The three architects of this outstanding period of development were Sir Hugh Foot, Governor of Jamaica (1951-1959), Norman Manley, Premier (1955-1962) and his Minister of Finance, Noel Nethersole. None of them could have been described as charismatic, yet between them they so transformed the Jamaican economy that by 1957 Norman Manley was able to assert "The Jamaican economy is expanding at a rate faster than that of most countries in the world ... at a faster rate than any other West Indian island, at a faster rate than Puerto Rico or England or the United States or even Canada."
They also modernised the country's infrastructure, advanced its governance, revolutionised education and training and kept the homicide rate among the lowest in the world.
The Jamaican people will have to choose between experiencing emotional highs and settling down to the hard work and fixity of purpose which is required for national development. I wish the Budget Debate had made these options clearer.
Arnold Bertram, historian and former parliamentarian, is current chairman of Research and Product Development Ltd. Email redev@cwjamaica.com.
