Cecil GutzmoreWITH THE outcome of the last general election and, more emphatically, of the by-election in St. Ann North East, the long-running Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and Peoples National Party (PNP) duopoly gives every indication of having thrown off the third-party challenge posed by Bruce Golding's National Democratic Movement (NDM).
Not for the first time in Jamaica a third party has bitten the electoral dust. But the effects of the disaster that the JLP-PNP have jointly made of the Jamaican economy, and of the Jamaican polity and society more generally, are not so easily shrugged off. Nuff people a feel it.
The resulting national crisis represents a social powder-keg. It is thus easily conceivable that these incumbent-alternate office-holders could be swept away by other home-grown forces. By a coup from within the security forces or an uprising by the deprived, disappointed, disillusioned, angry and spontaneously at last no longer disunited people.
This is the broad context of the question that ended my previous column (North East St.Ann -the continuing crisis) on March 12. I argued, apparently gloomily: The problem though is that, in terms of Jamaica's deepening crisis, it matters little which of our two old political parties wins the forthcoming general election. Neither has the policies and programmes, nor overstanding adequate to the task of national reconstruction. And I asked: Since dem na go no weh, an a de two a dem mash up de place, a how we can get dem fi staat fix it?
I remain astonished, frankly, that Dr Omar Davies and the PNP Government did not take the opportunity of the financial sector debacle to come to the country with the strongest possible argument for a project/crusade of national reconstruction. Look, they might/should have said, this financial sector crisis is a monumental national disaster. This is no time to apportion blame, though history might blame us (for running high interest-rates for too long and a failure properly to monitor and supervise the sector). It might blame the leaders of that sector for imprudence, mismanagement and dishonesty, even. And it might blame external circumstances, globalisation particularly (for making Jamaica increasingly uncompetitive.) My astonishment is the greater, given that they chose what was predictably the most expensive possible resolution.
Did the Government really appreciate the parlous financial condition of the Jamaican state and the near catastrophic consequences a bail-out of the banks on that scale, with the knock-on effect on the budget of funding the ever-accruing extra debt at compound interest? Jamaica, after all, was not the USA facing its Savings and Loans crisis. If the Government did not realise it, this alone would render it totally unfit for office. There are clear signs that it did not, and therefore is not.
It was typical of Dr Davies' stewardship that no real strategy for dealing with the crisis is anywhere detectable. Only the clever and elaborate stratagem of trickling those astounding interest payments onto the nation's budget and then using borrowing, and near fire-sales of national assets to try to balance the books. Of course, we must not forget that there is the IMF Staff-Monitored Programme. All this by a government that has concurrently presided over some four years of negative growth. They appear to have nothing even approaching a plan for substantial positive growth. All they seem to have are frequently repeated hopes that marginal growth is round the corner. As Mikey Smith said, 'Mi Cyaan Believe It'. On what basis would they inspire Jamaicans to action were they to win the next general election?
The JLP is not tainted by the last 12 years when they have been out of office. But dem nasty-up a likkle still. They, as previously pointed out in this column, are fully responsible for the fuelling of the trajectory of national indebtedness that first took off under Michael Manley. Thus compromised by their past, what hope can we have in their future.
Mr Seaga appeared to be offering two big economic ideas. First: that our national currency should be fully backed. It now is, under the PNP, if I understand correctly. Secondly: he wanted to harness JPSCo and Petrojam in a project to reduce the exorbitant price of energy to manufacturing in Jamaica. He himself admits that the Government's sell-off of JPSCo to private foreign interests completely stymies that idea. In the heady Cold War days of his 1980s deliverance, Mass Eddie was unable to attract any genuinely big-league foreign investors to Jamaica. Why should one believe that in the oh-so-cold climate of the globalisation-driven early 21st century he is going to be able to do any better. And was Mr Karl Samuda his big tears on radio notwithstanding correct about the IMF-World Bank attitude to Mr Seaga?
Yet it is one of these political parties that Jamaicans will elect at the next general election. If individually their quivers appear shot-free of nationally relevant arrows before battle commences and if the incumbent is to be almost gratuitously opposed by the opposition leave aside the tendency to undo each other's projects - over un-agreed national policy objectives, little good can come of whatever may be attempted in office.
Does it not follow that what our nation needs minimally from the PNP-JLP is that a way be found between now and the next election for them to work together after the polls on an agreed set of objectives and specific practical policies for national reconstruction. These could not, in the nature of things, have emerged from the PNP-organised national consultation of blessed post-1997 memory.
This proposal does not entail an end to inter-party competition for office. There are instances such as the former Federal Republic of West Germany (where there was a Grand Coalition between the SPD and the CDU) and Israel (currently) that illustrate this possibility. Why should anyone for a moment accept that the Constitution of Jamaica forbids such a development. The initial issue is whether our JLP and PNP can rise to such a challenge? And, if under popular pressure they can and do, what are the minimal elements of the programme for national re-construction that they would seek mutually to implement?
If the revolution is not yet and if even a national uprising may do little to produce a politically progressive and coherent way forward, why should we not try to oblige our existing political forces to act in our interest. This column will begin to explore the minimal elements of a programme for national re-construction together with thinking about the implications of other facets of the argument put forward here.
Cecil Gutzmore is a research student and lecturer at the University of the West Indies. E-mail: gutzmorecr@hotmail.com
