last week, three university lecturers felt Golding's presentation was a good attempt to deal with most of the current issues facing Jamaicans in a manner that was easy to digest."He used the time as best as he could to address the target audience," says University of the West Indies political science lecturer Richard Crawford. "Since an election is around the corner, we are parading the issues again ... He did some homework and, therefore, he had a grasp of some of the issues. He was easy to listen to and to resonate with."
Political commentator and lecturer at the Northern Caribbean University (NCU), Charlene Sharpe-Pryce shares this view.
"I think he (Golding) chose his audience well and tried to be all-inclusive, paying particular attention to the anticipated 'first-time electors', those 18-year-olds who are on the voters' list, and who literally would have experienced life under only the PNP (People's National Party) administration," she said.
According to Sharpe-pryce, Golding gave a creditable overview of the governance system, identifying the challenges and to some extent its successes.
"He went for breadth instead of depth, thus touching a wide number of areas briefly instead of focusing on a few areas in depth. This has its advantage, in that non-specialists could follow the presentation with some level of ease," she added.
'Spoke to the poor'
Golding centred his speech on Thursday around the issue of job creation, citing employment as one of the major planks of a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) government.
Crawford noted: "He spoke to poor people, the small farmer, the mother who is suffering and trying to send her children to school, and perhaps the number-one issue on the minds of people, jobs."
While agreeing with Sharpe-Pryce that Golding's presentation addressed a range of issues plaguing the system of governance, Crawford thought that, without modernising the system, Golding's ideas to move the country forward might have no basis on which to materialise.
"The very fact that we have a backlog of cases [in the courts]; the very fact that we mismanage so terribly; the very fact that corruption is so rampant in the country and the police can get away with what they do is largely due to the deficiencies in the constitution and the law," he opined. "So, we must modernise the base of the society, the laws, so we can then go forward with the other issues."
Lecturer at the University of Technology (UTECH), Dr. Horace Williams, while sharing some of the perspectives of Crawford and Sharpe-Pryce, said Golding needed to add depth to some economic ideas he expressed.
Golding's proposal to remove public hospital charges, for example, did not explain how health care would be funded, Dr. Williams noted.
He said while the intent seems to be a move to bring the National Housing Trust (NHT) contributions, National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and education tax under one umbrella to support the health bill as previously proposed by Audley Shaw, the current status of the NIS might not be able to support the costs of health care.
"The NIS is paying out now more than it is taking in, so there is no surplus there on a day-to-day basis. The education tax is also a drop in the bucket, so it means, to a large extent, raiding the NHT," Williams surmised.
Not convinced
He was not entirely convinced either by Golding's ideas on the agricultural and tourism sectors. Moving bauxite shipment from the Ocho Rios Port to Port Kaiser in St. Elizabeth in order to dedicate the Ocho Rios Port to tourism might not be a wise move, Williams argued.
He said the move might not be feasible for the St. Ann Bauxite Company which utilises the port.
Williams said more needed to be said about how a Jamaica Labour Party government would attract young people to agriculture and how it would use the sector to generate employment for the youth.
