Prime Minister Portia Simpson, who led her People’s National Party (PNP) to victory in December 2011, has chosen to call for the general elections on February 25th, almost a year before they are statutorily due, and with public opinion polls showing her party holding a 4% lead over the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).
In the circumstances, JLP leader Andrew Holness, has chosen to attribute the early call to fear on the part of the Prime Minister that new measures negotiated with the International Monetary Fund, and being progressively implemented, will place increasing pressure on the population, with the likelihood that the government would feel a progressive dissatisfaction on the part of the electorate if it held off elections until the statutory date of December 21st this year.
The fact of the matter is that, as the JLP government lost the previous elections primarily because it had to pursue the IMF’s recommendations, the PNP having won a dramatic victory in 2011 with 42 of the 63 parliamentary seats, inevitably found itself pursuing the same financial strategy that the JLP government did, and to which the loss of the party was attributed in 2011. And in fact, the PNP never pretended that it could do otherwise.
Recently, however, the government has been shown to be holding a lead of 4% over the opposition, and the Prime Minister would appear to have decided that an earlier election is preferable to proceeding towards the constitutional end of its term, with little evidence that the economy, while said to be stabilizing, is likely to perform in a manner that will give the electorate any strong sense of satisfaction.
The elections pose a particular challenge to Prime Minister Simpson, in the sense that having taken over the mantle of leadership in January 2006 from then Prime Minister P J Patterson, who had had a run of four successful general election victories, she was unable at that time to satisfy the electorate that she could, as was said, “ease the squeeze” of the IMF programmes. But her return to office in January 2012 placed her facing the same predicament of an economy under IMF supervision, and with no option but to continue the programmes.
The IMF itself has indicated its satisfaction with the implementation of its recommendations, and by general account, Finance Minister Peter Phillips (who had challenged Portia Simpson for the leadership after the retirement of P J Patterson), has stood stringently in support of it, to the general satisfaction of the IMF advisers. The question therefore arising is whether the electorate will accept the effects of the strategy, and will concur with the IMF that the programme can provide a long-run basis for the improvement of the economy.
No doubt, the Prime Minister has decided that since the public opinion poll results are favourable to the government this suggests that there is a certain acceptability of the programme by the electorate which should reflect itself in an election; and that it is probably the case that the electorate doubts, having now tried both political parties under IMF tutelage, that a change of government will result in any change of economic strategy by the JLP.
What is likely to be of concern to the government is whether it will be able to hold its vote, to the extent that its victory will not be substantially less than the 42 -21 lead it gained in the previous elections. In recent times there appears to have been some sense of diminution of public confidence in the leadership of Portia Simpson-Miller, at least when compared with their assessment during the relatively long reign of PJ Patterson.
But one of the characteristics of the rule of the present administration appears to have been that Patterson has played, in some measure, what can be described as an oversight role over Portia Simpson-Miller’s conduct of office, while remaining in the background. And the odds would seem to be that he will play a public role in the campaign.
The fact of the matter is, of course, that given the rigid tutelage of the IMF, there has been little substantive policy difference between the two parties, particularly as far as the conduct of the economy is concerned. There appears to be a general consensus among the population that there are minimal economic policy alternatives available at this time.
From that perspective, the strong public outcries unfavourable to the IMF when Jamaica, under Michael Manley, first sought the institution’s assistance, are no longer in evidence, the consensus being that the medicine must be taken. In that sense too, the institution is no longer, in Jamaica, under substantial public or political criticism, and the era of Michael Manley’s assertion, “Either the IMF or Me”, has long been over.
In a somewhat similar fashion also, there now appears to be a general consensus between the parties on the direction of the country’s foreign policy, as distinct from the period of the second half of the 1970s. The assumption of office of Patterson as Prime Minister, contrary to the international economic and political atmosphere of that earlier period, led to a consolidation of agreement that the new era of globalization, with the diminution of the influence of the new Russia and the rising capitalism of China, positioned Jamaica within the assumptions of the new global system, with the emphasis on non-ideological approaches to global governance.
It is likely to be the case that, as in recent years, whichever party forms the government will maintain the now prevailing Caricom understanding of the need to find new paths for Jamaica and the Region within that prevailing international consensus of coming to terms with the challenges of the varying facets of globalization.
