What the PNP stands for

Divulging what he calls a new philosophical framework, People’s National Party (PNP) President Mark Golding says the party’s clear mission going forward is to focus on the quality of life of the Jamaican people and to build a more equitable society.

Golding said Sunday that that focus would reinforce the party’s long-standing democratic socialist tradition.

He told thousands of Comrades at the National Arena, where the party held its 84th annual conference, that progressive politics was fundamental to the PNP’s belief system and would never change under his leadership.

The party had appointed professor of humanities at Brown University, Anthony Bogues, to chair the PNP’s Policy and Vision Commission.

Over a one-year period, Bogues and his team consulted, reflected, and refined a philosophical restatement of the party’s aims and objectives as a political movement.

The Bogues report was approved by the National Executive Council of the PNP at a two-day meeting in July. The report, according to Golding, was ratified and embraced by party delegates at the private session of its 84th annual conference.

“Our party now has a clear and inspirational philosophical framework from which our policies and programmes for when we return to Government are being developed, refined, and implemented,” Golding told supporters.

Discussing some of the key pillars of what the PNP believes, Golding said that the function and responsibility of Government is to intervene on the side of the collective good of the Jamaican people.

“While market forces have an important economic function, the interests of the majority of our people are not served when market forces are dogmatically treated as sole and paramount in determining our well-being.

“The PNP believes that progressive politics is the politics for the people. The PNP is a mass democratic party of the democratic Left,” said Golding, who emphasised that the party stood for the social and economic transformation of Jamaican society.

The PNP president insisted that the party intends to fix the social structures that impede people’s chances to positively transform their lives and fulfil their dreams.

Elaborating on its revised philosophical approach, Golding said that the party believes in social equality and aims to eliminate all class, racial, colour, and gender divides in the Jamaican society.

“We must build a more just, inclusive, and democratic society,” he said.

Golding said that the PNP respects and protects social and human rights based on principles of mutual respect and love for each other.

“We are for self-reliance and economic independence within a regionalist frame so that we are not dependent on others for what we can effectively do for ourselves and so that we can build Caribbean unity and collective regional action for sustainable development,” he said.

Against the background of the long history of racial slavery and colonialism, Golding said that the PNP was in support of reparatory justice.

Further, the PNP leader said that the party believes in environmentally sustainable development that does not mortgage future generations by selfish practices today.

“I embrace the collective interests of all well-thinking Jamaicans in a united spirit of nation-building, but my focus and intent are to defend and uplift the struggling, the poor, the vulnerable, and the marginalised in our society,” Golding maintained.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com