Gov’t touts achievements three years into second term

Three years after the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) 49-14 blowout election victory over the People’s National Party (PNP), issues such as crime and a trust deficit cast a long shadow over the Holness administration’s successes.

Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke believes the Government has been performing well and has a lot to be proud of, noting that when the JLP made its case for re-election in 2020, it did so promising to deliver a strong economic recovery as it pledged to pursue an ambitious agenda of reform.

“We delivered a comprehensive-yet-targeted social and economic support programme, the CARE Programme, which benefited just under 500,000 Jamaicans,” he said, referring to the State’s COVID-19 relief initiative which was introduced at the end of the previous term for those hard-hit by the economic crunch during the pandemic.

The finance minister said that the long tail of the pandemic has had a significant impact across the government, resulting in the administration having to push back timelines for some initiatives.

“In the first year of this term, which was during the height of the pandemic, we followed through on policy commitments, when it would have been easy to renege, and made our Central Bank independent. We passed legislation to establish a Fiscal Commission, and we returned to our fiscal rules. We also became the first small country in the world to independently sponsor a catastrophe bond, strengthening Jamaica’s economic and climate resilience,” Clarke told The Sunday Gleaner.

He said that these policy signals helped to boost the confidence of consumers, investors and businesses that the macroeconomic stability would be preserved.

“As such, though there may have been delays, businesses never stopped investing, even during the pandemic,” said Clarke.

The Government, he added, has “delivered a strong recovery in economic output”, resulting in quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) output as at March 2023 being the highest first-quarter figure in a decade.

He further noted that while the pandemic caused the unemployment rate to skyrocket to almost 13 per cent as at July 2020, today, it stands at a historic low of 4.5 per cent, bettering a pre-COVID record of 7.2 per cent.

Turning to the debt trajectory, Clarke said there was a similar success as by the end of fiscal year 2020-2021, the debt-to-GDP ratio climbed to 110 per cent, reversing six years of decline, but in March 2023, it bettered pre-COVID levels, standing at 78 per cent.

Clarke also touted recovery in the net international reserves, which fell in September 2020 to US$2.7 billion but is now at US$4.1 billion today. The Central Bank, he added, is also achieving a recovery in the rate of inflation, which is within striking distance of the target of just above six per cent, but which was in the double digits for almost 18 months.

“Much capital expenditure that we had planned over those COVID years had to be placed on hold so we could provide approximately $80 billion of COVID support ... through the CARE Programme and to the Ministry of Health for drugs, protective gear, supplies and staffing ... . So our transport and waste management systems, for example, would have been in far better shape today had we not had the shift in resource allocation,” Clarke said.

IMPROVEMENTS IN HEALTH

Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton agreed, noting that the impact of COVID will continue to linger.

Tufton said that the administration is now occupied by the post-COVID response, with mental health being a key area of focus. Among the challenges which emerged, he noted, were heavy social dysfunction in children and adults, noting that his ministry offered several psychosocial programmes aimed at problem-solving.

“We launched the Problem Plus method, where we trained community members, graduating more than 100 [people] recently to go into communities to support persons in overcoming their mental health challenges. We see it manifesting in increasing suicide rates and other types of dysfunctional behaviour in the schools and in the communities,” said Tufton.

The health sector also faced a shortage of workers due to massive overseas recruitment of mainly nurses. About 1,500 positions have been created to provide better security of tenure for nurses and doctors, Tufton noted, adding that the administration continues its 10-year strategic reform to add more staff and to improve the infrastructure.

He also noted big spending on infrastructure, with projects such as expansion of the Spanish Town Hospital close to breaking ground, and the overhaul of the Cornwall Regional Hospital, which is in its final phase.

Huge successes have also been seen in tourism, with a significant recovery since the pandemic.

ADMINISTRATION’S GOODWILL SQUANDERED

But while the administration has made progress in some key areas, the JLP is on the back foot, according to political commentator Lloyd B. Smith.

June opinion polls conducted by the Don Anderson-led Market Research Services Limited showed the Holness-led JLP trailing the PNP, with the opposition party outside of the margin of error for the first time since 2015.

With the four times-postponed local government elections yet to be called since they were originally due in 2019, speculation is rife that Jamaicans will soon be summoned to the polls as just over five months remain before the latest deadline.

Last week, Prime Minister Andrew Holness downplayed talk of an imminent election, saying that some “powermongers” have been agitating for the polls. But he said his mind was not on elections at the moment.

Smith believes the administration is buckling under the weight of crime despite its use of the states of emergencies to try to tackle the problem.

Assessing the administration’s performance, Smith told The Sunday Gleaner that the Government has scored numerous own goals, among them the massive salary increases to the political directorate while leaving many public sector workers feeling shafted.

Other missteps, he said, have “eroded the goodwill which propelled them to power”.

“The [2020 general] election came at a time when the PNP was at its most fractious, and the results were not surprising. Outside of that, there was a lot of goodwill for Holness, who, with his ‘Brogad’ and Clarks image, managed to propel the party back into power and with a resounding majority. The election was more a presidential election rather than a PNP vs JLP because people saw this young fresh leader, who promised to take them into the political promised land,” said Smith, a former parliamentarian who ran on a PNP ticket.

The Western Mirror publisher noted that many of the “political unknowns” who were elected in 2020 “did so on the coattail of Holness, ... but the deep underbelly of all this is that the PNP was totally outspent and that is a fact”.

Smith said that despite some notable achievements, that goodwill has been squandered.

“The trust factor has been significantly reduced and Holness has made a number of gaffes – putting the chief justice on probation, the way [he] attempted to foist Rocky Meade as cabinet secretary, the way the people’s complaints were treated when they complained about road repairs in St Thomas, the way the salary increases to elected officials was handled, there are just so many of them,” he reasoned.

LOW TRUST FACTOR

Pointing to the Integrity Commission report of parliamentarians being investigated for illicit enrichment, the social commentator said that opposition lawmakers have made public comments distancing themselves from any such probe, but added that the Government’s response to gag its members from discussing it raises suspicions.

“The trust factor is already so low, and here is something that possibly has a legitimate response, and the administration’s response is that they cannot speak to it. It does not augur well. There is a credibility gap and one of the things Mr Holness and Jamaican politicians must realise is that the electorate is street smart and they read into things,” Smith said.

But what Smith believes continues to be the Achilles’ heel of the administration is crime.

“He (Holness) had put his neck on the block that he would deal with it, but it remains an albatross, not only around his neck but that of the administration. When you look at the types of murders, too; so no matter how he attempts to spin that one, it’s not doing the administration any good,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.

“It is becoming more and more obvious as the days go by that the administration is on the back foot and in a corner. Persons vote against a party and not necessarily for the challenger and that is likely to happen in the upcoming elections,” he said, adding that he believes the next general election will be won by a narrow margin.

Nevertheless, Smith believes the administration performed creditably in areas such as the economy, noting that the macroeconomic indicators have improved significantly despite the pandemic. The reduction of the debt-to-GDP levels is highly commendable despite a wobbling dollar, he added.

‘GOING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION’

PNP General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell said the economic success touted by the Holness administration is based on a continuation of policies of the Simpson Miller administration. He told The Sunday Gleaner that the PNP was happy the Government had the foresight to continue them.

However, he said the administration’s overall performance was dismal.

“The Government gets a failing grade. Crime is out of control with no end in sight. Corruption is rampant on the land. We have a lot of incompetence and bungling in the administration, and it is running afoul of the Constitution. To be frank, they promised to take the country from poverty to prosperity, but we have increased levels of poverty and we are actually going in the opposite direction,” Campbell said last week.

He poured scorn on the recent unemployment numbers being celebrated by the Government, saying that nearly 780,000 Jamaicans of employment age are not seeking employment.

“If you are to travel in any community, like the PNP has been doing, you would realise that the unemployment [figure] is not 100,000 people across the country. I don’t know to what end you trumpet those numbers when you know the reality on the ground is not so,” Campbell, who lost his seat in the 2020 polls, argued.

The method of determination of the unemployment rate has not changed, however.

Campbell said that many people were frustrated by the high cost of living, with added concerns about their safety and survival.

“No amount of PR can convince a hungry man that he is not hungry. You cannot eat the icing for an entire day. You must want a piece of cake, too,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.

Adding that he is confident that future polls will show the trend in the PNP’s bounceback to continue, Campbell said it is the first time since he has been assessing poll findings that he is seeing poor political representation score so highly in polls looking at the JLP’s 49 members of parliament.

JLP General Secretary Dr Horace Chang did not avail himself for an interview despite a promise to do so last week.

While Holness said that elections are not on his mind, he made the same comment in 2020 before calling the general election two weeks later.

Campbell and the PNP offered Holness the following advise: “You need a vacation. Time come.”

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com