Vernon Daley

I'm happy to see that the Vale Royal talks will resume between the Government and the Opposition. The cold stand-off was not doing anybody any good. Instead, Jamaica was hurting because of pettiness.

Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller has come around to the view that the national interest is more important than injured personal feelings and that's a good way to start off the New Year. Good riddance to termites and all the madness that came with them.

The Vale Royal talks, initiated in the P.J. Patterson era, is a good tool of governance. I've maintained in this column that an Opposition party has to be integrally involved in working with the Government of the day on critical national issues affecting the country. Such collaboration opens up a forum for a wider pool of ideas as to how to deal with problems and reduces unnecessary contention about broad national goals.

It's for that reason that I've thrown my support behind Prime Minister Bruce Golding's proposal to have key parliamentary committees chaired by Opposition members. The implementation of that idea will bring about meaningful changes in how the business of Parliament is conducted. This model has worked well for the Public Accounts Committee and there is no reason why it can't work for other committees as well.

On the regional level

There was also a move made a few years ago to bring this form of inclusive governance to the regional level by involving Opposition Leaders in talks at the Caribbean Community Heads of Government summits. There was one such meeting, but since then we have heard very little about that initiative. I hope Mr. Golding, who participated in that experiment as an Opposition Leader, will impress upon his fellow Prime Ministers the good sense of making it a success.

The cynics among us will argue that the Vale Royal talks are meant to blunt the force of the Opposition and co-opt it into being the Government's sidekick. Those who hold that view don't recognise how deep are the problems that confront us and how great the need is for cooperation.

An opposition party, engaged in genuine talks with a government, need not kowtow to the administration's agenda. In fact, we should hope that the Opposition People's National Party will be firm and clear in the objectives it has set going into those talks but be flexible enough to accommodate a middle ground.

The talks will likely deal with issues on which there are fundamental disagreements between the Opposition and the Government but that is not a reason for one side or the other to lose faith and pull out when the going gets tough. If both sides keep in mind that they are there working in the interest of a nation and not their parties, then they will see things with great clarity.

The talking heads

The pundits are at it again. Why do we even bother to listen to them? When Barack Obama threw his hat into the ring a year ago and declared his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, the pundits said he was living in a dream world. That may, in fact, be the case. Only time will tell whether he has been too audacious in his hope. What I find fascinating is that some of those same pundits on the U.S. networks are now predicting an Obama win over Hillary Clinton following his victory in Iowa.

It's a lesson for the public in America, as in places like Jamaica, to be careful not to put too much store on what is said by the pundits and talking heads. They sway with the wind.