Editorial | Mr Golding’s big speech

Today is supposed to be the climaxing public session of the annual conference of the People’s National Party (PNP) after two days of private sessions.

Presumably, the delegates spent the time agreeing to policies and formulating the party’s platforms.

Occasions like today at Jamaican political party conferences are usually of speeches by party officials, culminating with that of the party’s leader, aimed at rallying their supporters and underlining their electability. Which is what we suppose Mr Golding, the PNP’s president, will attempt to do in his address at the National Arena.

However, in that speech, this newspaper looks forward to, and expects, something far grander and substantially more profound than we have received during Mr Golding’s nearly four years of leadership of his party. He must make a real case for why Jamaicans should vote for the PNP for itself and not because of the perceived failings of Andrew Holness’ Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration, which has been in office for more than eight years.

The point is that this will quite possibly be the PNP’s last annual conference before Jamaicans vote in their next general election, which is constitutionally due by next September, unless Prime Minister Holness goes into his allowable grace period. Already, the parties are in campaign mode.

After its heavy defeat (49-14) in the 2020 election, the PNP has reason to be optimistic about its chances next time. In last February’s local government elections, it tied with the JLP for the municipalities won (seven) and it won the popular vote. Further, a disaggregation of votes in the local government discussions suggests that the PNP would have won more constituencies and thereby taken the national government. Moreover, subsequent opinion polls showed the opposition party leading the JLP by nearly eight percentage points – 36.8 per cent to 28 per cent.

MOMENTUM FAVOURED

At least, up to April, momentum favoured the PNP.

Mr Golding can’t be without credit for his party’s seeming reversal of fortunes. He appears to have quelled, if not totally healed, its fratricidal tendencies of recent years. The PNP is an obviously more focused and coherent unit.

However, the Opposition has been helped in no small measure by public perception of widespread corruption in government, and the administration’s inability, so far, despite record low unemployment, to parlay Jamaica’s dozen years of reform and macroeconomic stability into substantial growth and a sense by the majority of voters of their personal advancement.

Such an environment is fertile ground in which to highlight and amplify policy failures of, mistakes by, and grievances against, the Government.

The PNP’s strategy has been to allow the administration to implode rather than offer fulsome policy prescriptions in a way that they might be robustly interrogated. There is no sharp contrast, except perhaps in shades of grey, between the JLP and PNP.

Which is not to say that PNP has offered nothing, or not attempted to differentiate itself from Mr Holness’ administration.

For instance, in their conference speeches last year, Mr Golding and his shadow finance minister, Julian Robinson, talked about initiating policies to extricate Jamaica from its low-wage, low-technology and low-growth economic trap, suggesting the outlines of a sort of industrial policy that included partnership with the private sector in education, training, and research and innovation.

GO FURTHER

Mr Golding picked up on several of these themes, as well as pressed for the Government to go further in hiking the income tax threshold to help compensate for years of inflation. However, most of the policy proposals remain broad offerings, without costs or strategies for their implementation.

In some instances, too, there appears to have been a lack of coordination in the shadow cabinet. So, when the shadow education minister, Damion Crawford, floated the possibility of raising the rate of the General Consumption Tax (GCT) to help fund education, he was quickly shot down by Mr Robinson for speaking out of turn.

Jamaican political parties traditionally put out their manifestos on the eve of elections, often too late for them to be seriously analysed and commented upon. Which is the safe thing to do. Some PNP officials are ostensibly also concerned about their ideas being “stolen” by the Government.

The Gleaner, however, believes that it is time to be different.

The JLP is in government. Voters have a good sense of its programmes and policies and what they like, or dislike, about them and their implementation. The PNP, we believe, should put its own policies against these, allowing voters to make an informed choice.

Put another way, Mr Golding should paint his big vision for Jamaica, outline the policies that will make this vision a reality, and then immediately have his shadow ministers disclose the programmes and strategies that will underpin these policies.

That should happen now. Not on the eve of the election.