The PNP can never make Jamaica great
IT was Harold Lasswell, American political scientist, who defined politics as “who gets what, when, and how”.
The first time I heard this expression was, as I recall, from Maxine Henry-wilson — a top-tier People’s National Party (PNP) activist. And it was former Prime Minister PJ Patterson who described our politics as “a fight for scarce benefits and spoils carried on by hostile tribes that seem to be perpetually at war”. Deep in the psyche of the upper echelon of PNP leadership and its supporters is the belief that politics is about sharing and distributing benefits.
If the sharing of benefits is the main focus, then the production of benefits, by logic, must take a back seat. But in order to have things to share, there must be the things. It, therefore, means that there must be a continuous production of things and a continuous creation of opportunities. The guiding philosophy of the PNP does not inspire, encourage, or reward the production of things.
The PNP’S genetical make-up is that of socialism. And whether it is called democratic socialism or Fabian socialism, it is still socialism, and socialism has been put to the test and found wanting.
The simple truth is that the Government cannot do for people what people should do for themselves. In an environment in which people are rewarded without effort, then more and more people will put out less and less effort and expect to be rewarded.
This model is a proven failure. It failed in the Soviet Union, it failed in China, and it failed in Jamaica under former Prime Minister Michael Manley. Under Manley, there was outright hostility against the productive class. This was driven by the misguided belief that governments should control the “commanding heights of the economy”.
Capitalists were hated and hounded and encouraged to take one of the five flights per day to Miami. Many did, and it was the main reason Jamaica experienced seven years of negative growth under the Manley Administration. That was a total cumulative negative growth of 25 per cent. It meant that under Manley Jamaica not only stagnated but moved back 25 per cent from where it was in 1972. The main employer during that period was the Government and that was the genesis of our debt burden.
The next period of PNP leadership was from 1989 to 2007. That was 18.5 unbroken years. That’s a period so long that most dog pups born in 1989 would have died before the PNP left office. A child born in 1989 would have reached the age of majority. But what did the PNP do in that time? In short, it destroyed the black entrepreneurial class in Jamaica and ran the country’s infrastructure into the ground.
So, in the first round, Manley went after the 21 families and he succeeded in driving away many of them. In round two it destroyed enterprising black businesses. What will it do in round three? More of the same!
The PNP has not recognised the folly of its approach. It has not apologised for past errors and it has not indicated that it will do anything differently. The overarching reason the PNP seeks power is to distribute the resources of the State among its supporters. That is the model many African countries have used. That is why a continent that is so rich in natural resources wallows in perpetual poverty. That is the future Jamaica can look forward to should the PNP return anytime soon.
The sad truth is that the intellectual class which tends to support the PNP must be aware of this. But it is heavily invested in “benefit politics” and could not care less what happens to the country as long as it is getting something.
Well this is what will happen if the PNP should get back in office. Business people will immediately place a pause on any expansion plans. They will be well aware of what life was like under past PNP administrations. They will adopt a wait-and-see approach. The funny thing with the economy is that it becomes what people believe it will be. That is how the magic word “confidence” or the lack thereof works. While business people wait and see for fear that the economy will worsen, the economy will worsen, and as the economy worsens, people will wait and see even more. Before long the economy will start to stagnate and enter negative growth.
As the economy enters into low or negative growth, which is the single most distinguishing trait of past PNP administrations, businesses will stop employing workers and may even resort to laying off workers. This may start gradually then suddenly, in anticipation of a falling off in demand for whatever goods or services the business produces. No employer will want to be caught with a large workforce producing goods and services that has no market.
As the economy contracts, as it will under the PNP, government revenue will contract too. When revenue contracts, Government is unable to give meaningful pay raise as was common during the previous PNP terms. Under the PNP, public sector workers, police, and teachers are accustomed to wage freezes or token pay increases. It is a known fact that the greatest pay increases to public sector workers have occurred when the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) forms the Government. That is because the JLP creates an environment that is conducive to economic growth. And when the economy grows, by extension, the revenue grows from which workers are paid.
Having abundant revenue is also a requisite for governments to be able to carry out capital expenditure projects. The maintenance and the upkeep of roads, schools, police stations (remember when policemen
were falling through the floors of police stations), water systems, hospitals, garbage collection, and public transit system are all made possible from adequate and reliable revenue collection. All these would go back to the sorry state of affairs which is the hallmark of PNP administrations.
We are not to take these things for granted. When revenue does not increase from growth, it will have to be supplemented by increasing the revenue base, that means more taxation and/or more borrowing. What we have had in the past from successive PNP administrations is little or no growth resulting in declining revenues, which necessitates increasing taxation, increasing borrowing, and cutting service delivery.
The Andrew Holness-led Government has brought the country to a state of financial stability and now is not the time to hand things over to the distributors in chief. Surplus can be squandered in the blink of an eye.
In 1972, Edward Seaga, as the then finance minister, left a surplus of US$157 million for Manley. Using the Employment Relief Programme, popularly known as the Crash Programme, this sum disappeared like the morning mist. The Crash Programme was supposed to provide relief employment for 22,000 people but on a weekly basis 77,000 cheques were drawn. As you know “man haffi eat a food”.
By June 1973 we were receiving International Monetary Fund loans and by 1974 most Jamaicans became familiar with the words “foreign exchange”. It was then that we became acquainted with the dread that was brought about when we did not have enough of it. We must never go back down that road. We are on the road to prosperity. Let us continue the journey.
Dorlan H Francis is the Jamaica Labour Party caretaker of St Andrew Western. He is a personal financial adviser and author. Among his books is The Economic and Financial Crisis of 2007 — What Caused it: How to Avoid a Repeat. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or dhfken1@gmail.com.