Will Portia be taxing Bruce?

The political games are heating up. But there is one game which is not on: the game of ease-up on Bruce Golding. After his bruising wrestling match with K.D. Knight a couple of weeks ago, last week it was Portia Simpson Miller's turn to get into the ring with him - and she was declared a winner, even though the fight was called off.

The fight was supposed to move from the genteel, sterile and rules-governed environment of the Jamaica Conference Centre to the rough and tumble of the streets where the law of the jungle could be invoked and the rabble could determine the stakes. But teams PNP (People's National Party) and JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) are old, experienced hands at these games, and know how to play tit-for-tat and cat-and-mouse.

The PNP, sensing that the JLP administration has been burnt by the Manatt enquiry and that its moral authority was eroding, sought to ride the wave of discontent over growing petrol, food and electricity price increases, as well as Jamaicans' awareness of the effectiveness of mass protests in North Africa and the Middle East.

The PNP also wants to address lingering concerns that it is not an effective Opposition and that it has allowed this Government to get away with too much. The fact that interest groups were clamouring for a Government response to gas price hikes gave the PNP enough fuel to attempt to set off a blaze of protests. The PNP knows the politics of gas protests, and so when it flexed its political muscles last week, it knew it had the right cause.

Potential to go wrong

But it was a delicate balancing act, for the PNP also knew that these protests can go terribly wrong and be hijacked by criminal and lawless elements who will wreak havoc on a society wary of such consequences. That would be disastrous for the PNP.

Plus, the powerful Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) had issued a release calling on the PNP to call off its protest action in light of the dangers it posed. And while the PNP has to cater to the political base and to the masses, it can't afford to ignore these moneyed interests, on whom it will have to largely depend to finance its campaign to wrest power from Golding. So the PNP has to walk this delicate tightrope between the capitalist class and the masses. In the end, it had the best of both worlds.

The Government was forced to announce a rollback of gas prices hours before the PNP's planned protests. And while the PNP, late on the eve of the protests, and even in the face of indications the Government would relent, was still going ahead with its protests, good political sense prevailed, and it later called them off. So the Government was seen as bowing to the PNP's threat of street protests, while the public was free to go about its business in peace and safety and businesses could open their doors and make money. If the PNP had gone ahead with the protests and businesses were looted and the public inconvenienced, there could be backlash and the PNP would be on the back foot. And certainly, if they had stubbornly gone ahead even in the face of the Government's concessions, the public would see them as utterly unreasonable, and only acting in their own partisan interests.

The PNP pulled back just in time and basked in the glory of forcing the Golding administration to ease up the pressure on the poor (something which interest groups failed to do for weeks, despite writing letters and taking out ads).

Brandishing protest weapon

The PNP has not renounced its protest weapon, stressing that it reserves the right to pull it out, if it is not satisfied with the Government's response in the Budget. So the Opposition comes out not only looking caring and compassionate for the poor and our consumers and producers, but also reasonable, patriotic - and yet tough and resolute.

I disagree with the Gleaner editorial of Thursday, 'The gangs fail again on gas-price issue'. Continuing its plague-on-both-your-houses approach, which is generally commendable - though sometimes a manifestation of a lack of courage in pinpointing culprits - The Gleaner chastises the PNP. The Gleaner says the PNP's planned protests were "a perverse act of irresponsibility on the part of the Opposition, which showed little regard for the state of public finances".

I take The Gleaner's point generally about the need for fiscal prudence and discipline and the political parties' usual opportunism, populism and quest for cheap political advantage.

But the fact that the Government could effect even a temporary relief without jeopardising its International Monetary Fund programme indicates the power of protests. The fact is, a budget is, essentially, an ideological instrument. It reflects priorities which are not value-neutral and from the sky.

Budgets represent interests, values and class considerations. That is why the dialectical struggle is important in crafting and reformulating budgets. It is in the interest of the dominant class to pass off budgets as just natural, neutral and 'objective'.

Greater risks

The Opposition has taken the reasonable position of saying, let us see what you have in the Budget, what your priorities and programmes are, and then we decide how we react and what we do with our plans for protest. I put it to the Gleaner editorial writer that if an Opposition were to surrender its right to street protest in the supposed interest of stability, the common good and the fear of something going wrong, that itself could endanger those very things by increasing the arrogance of any Government, believing it can do what it wants, safe in the knowledge that the Opposition rules out street protests. And I tell you, Gleaner editorial writer, that if the masses find that they can't find an Opposition party to stand up for their interests and to blow the whistle on Government, you are faced with far greater risks when they, themselves, organise the protests!

It would have been a case of irresponsibility for the Opposition to have gone ahead with the protests despite the Government's concessions, but the very act of planning street demonstrations is not undemocratic, inherently disruptive, and disreputable.

This has been a responsible, reasoned and restrained Opposition. Though it suits some people to cast Portia Simpson Miller as a hothead, the fact is that she has resisted a number of attempts to push the PNP to challenge Golding more fiercely and in a more partisan way. Portia is more cool-headed and rational than many people give her credit for. This country would be in far greater problems had not the PNP, under her leadership, been as responsible and rational in the face of the enormous crises and challenges that this country has faced since the JLP won in 2007.

Yes, we must credit the Government for the actions it has taken to stabilise the economy and to respond to the global recession and explosion in commodity prices, but we also have to commend the Opposition for its responsibility and good sense, in not trying to exploit in a destructive way, the Government's many global and home-grown challenges. The Gleaner editorial, therefore, was unfair to the PNP.

PNP must do more

We must judge the PNP by how it responds to the Budget and to the Government's proposals. The PNP has to do more than play to the gallery or play to its hardline supporters and critics who have been yelling that it is not "chucking enough badness", as it were, to the Golding administration. The PNP must continue to resist the temptation to be crudely opportunistic.

The PNP, for example, must not be disingenuous about this Government's achievements in the macroeconomy. The fact that interest rates have declined to the lowest level in 40 years - when high interest rates seemed for many years an insuperable problem - is a major accomplishment. The debt-exchange programme with the private sector and the Jamaican people is another major achievement in an economy which, all of us concede, has been overburdened with debt. Yes, we still have a major debt problem, as my friend Ralston Hyman will point out, but it would be considerably worse without the debt exchange.

Stability in the foreign-exchange market is a major achievement - when, for many years volatility was a major issue which dominated talk shows, as did high interest rates. Don't switch the discussion to talk about how exporters are losing because the dollar has revalued. Look where we are coming from. The fact that net international reserves are at a record level of $2.6 billion is worthy of note. Yes, there are still many problems, again as my friend Ralston Hyman will correctly point out. And Ralston takes the time to read so, whatever his biases, we have to reckon with him.

IMF statistics

Inflation is single-digit - 6.7 per cent in February. Yes, poverty is increasing, but as Wednesday's Business Observer documents, poverty is also increasing in other Caribbean countries, including oil-rich Trinidad. And the IMF's World Economic Outlook issued last week says globally, "Growth is insufficiently strong to make a major dent in high unemployment. Some 205 million persons are looking for jobs, up by 30 million worldwide since 2007." And it reports that the overall IMF commodity price index rose by 32 per cent from the middle of 2010 to February this year. And, "food prices are within reach of their 2008 peaks". And don't forget our 40-odd per cent reduction in crime, which affects economic growth.

The Government was frank and humble in its Throne Speech read by the governor general: "There are many critical needs that affect the quality of life of the people that we have not been able to adequately address; the repair of our roads, the improved conditions of our schools and health facilities; the supply of water to our communities that still do not enjoy the basic amenity; better wages for public-sector workers … ."

And the GG has announced that "now that stabilisation of the economy is firmly in place, our focus must turn to growth and development". This is precisely how we must judge this year's Budget.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email feeback to columns@gleanerjm.com and ianboyne1@yahoo.com.