PM avoids crash... But most Jamaicans say 'Driver' taking country in wrong direction

With interest rates at their lowest level in years, crime trending down, and job prospects improving in some areas, the Golding administration has managed to convince more Jamaicans that the country is moving in the right direction, but the vast majority still want the 'Driver' to change course.

This is according to the latest Bill Johnson public-opinion poll commissioned by The Gleaner.

The poll was conducted islandwide from May 28 to 29 and June 4 to 5, 2011, and has a margin of error of plus or minus four per cent. It found that 68 per cent of Jamaicans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

But that is an improvement on the 82 per cent who urged Prime Minister Bruce Golding, the self-styled driver, to change course last April when Johnson tested the pulse of the country.

According to the latest poll, 14 per cent of Jamaicans believe the country is headed in the right direction, up from eight per cent last April. Eighteen per cent of the respondents said they did not know.

Golding led his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to a victory in the 2007 general election on the platform that the Portia Simpson Miller-led People's National Party was leading the country down the wrong path.

Golding vowed to change course and put the nation on a path to prosperity and economic growth. But since the election, his policies have failed to capture the imagination of Jamaicans who, consistently, have charged that the country was headed in the wrong direction.

In fact, every Gleaner-commissioned Bill Johnson poll done since September 2007 has shown more than half of the population charging that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2007 election, 28 per cent of Jamaicans told Golding he was headed in the right direction, but that number declined constantly in the three polls conducted after that until it hit rock bottom at a mere eight per cent last year.

But with the uptick this year, any other good news for Golding and his team could see the JLP moving into a strong position as the country moves towards the next general election due next year.

However, Golding will have to find a way to create jobs as unemployment has firmly overtaken crime as the most pressing problem for Jamaica.

The poll found that almost four in every 10 Jamaicans believe the need for jobs is the number-one problem nationwide. This is the highest it has been since 2007.

At the regional level, just under seven in every 10 Jamaicans see unemployment as the most pressing problem, with crime, road conditions, economic woes, and water problems completing the top list.

The Bill Johnson poll findings are in keeping with the latest business and consumer confidence survey done by the Jamaica Conference Board.

Consumer confidence down

The survey found that consumer confidence decreased marginally for the first quarter of 2011 mainly due to the expectations there would continue to be a scarcity of jobs in the year ahead, despite an improvement in the economy.

But at the same time, business confidence hit a three-year high - although not at the level it was in 2007 - because of widespread expectations that growth in the economy would improve firms' financial position.

The conference board said its consumer confidence index fell from 107 to 105.9 in the first-quarter survey for 2011, but it is still above the 90.8 recorded in the first quarter last year.

Although hitting 90 usually signals a healthy consumer mindset, the data showed that consumers were generally pessimistic about the year ahead in that they foresaw little benefit to them, even from an improved economy, as there would continue to be fewer jobs and higher prices.