The last general elections for the Jamaica House of Representatives having been held in October 2011, the country goes to the polls tomorrow, with all 63 seats being contested by the two main political parties, the ruling Peoples National Party led by Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller and the Jamaica Labour Party led by former Prime Minister, Andrew Holness.
It is no secret that Prime Minister Portia Simpson has had to lead an administration under the severe policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a situation which she inherited from the JLP’s last period of government, and which her government has rigidly adhered to during much of her tenure.
The diagnosis of the IMF in May 2013, in granting an Extended Fund Facility was severe, and is worth quoting: “for most of the past three decades, Jamaica has suffered from low growth, high public debt and serious social challenges. Key factors have been Jamaica’s low competitiveness, a weak business climate, and a lack of policy credibility”.
Since that period, Prime Minister Simpson-Miller has been claiming that the implementation of the IMF programme, largely under the management of Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips, has been judged as being progressively positive in terms of gradually stabilizing the public finances of the country, in spite of the persistent deterioration of the exchange rate of the Jamaican dollar. This devaluation of a floating Jamaican dollar, she claims, has contributed to the competitiveness of the economy, even though it cannot be claimed that in terms of the Jamaican dollar in the pockets of the citizens, they have found much to be pleased about.
So while the country is proceeding to elections with the value of the Jamaican dollar in the pockets of its citizens not being much to rejoice about, the government has been claiming that in what is essentially a transition period, the economy, particularly in terms of its large tourism industry, has become more competitive. And in those terms, both the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister have been claiming that the programme promises a continuing recuperation of the economy, and should not be changed through an election in which the opposition has not shown any substantial alternative vision to that being implemented under the IMF regime.
Opposition leader Andrew Holness, however, appears to have chosen to focus on what his party claims is the voters’ weariness of a persistent deterioration of their incomes, or at least, in the value of the goods that their incomes have been able to purchase. It is in that context that, virtually in the last stages of the campaign, Holness has chosen to present a Ten Point Plan that proposes a reduction in taxes of 25% on gross salaries between J$1.5m and 5m, to permit the householder to have more purchasing power.
Obviously Holness has chosen the last stage of the election campaign to present this proposal as a persuasive measure to an electorate tired of a (downwardly) floating dollar, in the face of an economy which is yet to show indications of substantial economic growth. For, as the World Bank stated in September of last year, “Over the last 30 years, real per capita Gross Domestic Product increased at an average of one per cent per year”.
The present position in the country’s House of Representatives, is that the PNP holds 42, and the JLP 21 of the 63 seats, with the PNP getting 53% of the vote against the JLP’s 46% in the last election. The JLP has been claiming that Prime Minister Simpson-Miller has been showing neither originality nor dynamism in her conduct of the economy, and that the growth in the tourism industry, which has been positive, is really the result of the efforts of previous governments of both parties.
General opinion of the parties’ potential in the elections in part focuses on the record of the PNP government since the departure of P J Patterson from the leadership both of the party and the Jamaican government. It is claimed, apparently by more than the opposition supporters, that Ms Simpson has not shown much dynamism in the conduct of the government, and the government’s defence has largely been based on the persistence and competence of Finance Minister Peter Phillips. In that context the JLP’s attack has been focused on portraying the Prime Minister as lacklustre and not up to the challenge of persuading the Jamaican people of her ability to demonstrate a positive approach to the longer-term improvement of the economy, beyond the IMF’s supervision and generosity.
In addition the last period of JLP government, substantially led by then Prime Minister Bruce Golding, is portrayed by the PNP as having allowed criminality, based on the substantial drug trade in which the country has been involved, to diminish the country’s reputation as a safe haven for tourism. The JLP’s response is, that during its tenure of government under then Prime Minister Bruce Golding, it was forced to deal with a deteriorating situation relating to the drug trade that the PNP largely increased under the long tenure of PNP Prime Minister P J Patterson between 1992 and his retirement in 2006.
Andrew Holness, the leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, while elected to the Parliament in 1997, had a brief tenure as Prime Minister of Jamaica between October 2011, when he succeeded Bruce Golding, and January 2012 when, with the government’s term up, the PNP won the general elections under Portia Simpson-Miller. So it can be said that, to the Jamaican electorate, he is relatively untested.
General opinion would appear to be, that even if the JLP were to win the elections, Holness will not find much more room to manoeuvre in terms of financial policy than the PNP government has found during the tenure of Finance Minister Peter Phillips. Phillips’ period in office has largely had the continuing approval of the IMF. And no doubt, the PNP will be claiming that President Obama’s brief visit to Jamaica at the end of April last year, on his way to the Summit of the Americas in Panama, has set the stamp of approval on the PNP’s conduct of economic policy.
It would seem to appear at this point, that the PNP’s chances of re-election now depend on whether the electorate has decided that the country is gradually moving out of the economic woods under the tutorship of the IMF, or whether what appears to be a last-minute tax ploy by the JLP persuades the voters that a domestically-engineered initiative is likely to relieve them of their weariness.
