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Don1, no comments on this one?
As a rule, I don’t call out posters. However, knowing your interest -- indeed passion -- for the pluses and minuses of JLPNP political, social and economic agenda, I suspect you might have insightful observations on today’s commentary by Ian Boyne.
A non-Progressive Agenda
Published: Sunday | August 21, 2011
Ian Boyne, Contributor
The long-awaited, highly anticipated, much-touted Progressive Agenda was finally unveiled - to an apparently widespread "what's that?" yawn among non-partisans and Labourites.
The disappointment with it has been palpable, judging from comments in media. There are several reasons for that. One, as the People's National Party (PNP) has been having a field day kicking around the Golding administration, people have been asking, "What's your alternative?" and we had been hearing about a developing Progressive Agenda. So expectation had built up that this document would spell out alternatives and programmes. The PNP was not stating that, mark you. But this impression had been formed. Weeks before the launch last Wednesday on Garvey's birthday, PNP spokespersons, already sensing that many would be disappointed in not seeing enough specifics, had begun to state very clearly that the Progressive Agenda was "not a manifesto" and that that would come nearer to the election. The Progressive Agenda is a framework, a philosophical outline, an approach to governance, they have been stressing. Fine.
Monumentally deficient
And it is precisely in that context that I find it monumentally deficient. This is a difficult task for me emotionally, because I have known and highly respected Winston 'Winty' Davidson since the 1970s, when he was parliamentary secretary under Michael Manley and I was working with the administration as a feature writer; and Anthony Hylton I have had enormous respect for. These two men are fine, serious intellectuals who have been passionate about their work on the Progressive Agenda. They have also approached their work with the utmost humility and have been highly consultative. So it is hard for me to be as critical as I intend to be and not care about their feelings, but the discipline of journalism demands no less on my part.
The 62-page Progressive Agenda is a misnomer. If you doubt me, send it to any political science department in the world and ask any first-year student what's progressive about it, knowing what progressive means in political science. In fact, this document represents a repudiation of progressive ideas. I can't think of a single page in this document that a sensible Labourite could not agree with in principle. So, philosophically, there is nothing here which separates and marks off the PNP from the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Now this might not be a bad thing in the thinking of consensus-hungry Jamaicans. But don't market it as distinctly progressive or PNP. It represents no ideological alternative to this Golding administration.
So many of the generalities, platitudes and clichés which inundate this document can easily be found in documents produced under JLP administrations. I know, for having worked as a communications professional with all political administrations since the 1970s, I have read more government policy documents than I care to remember. In fact, without the PNP's trademark on it, and knowing what I know about the PNP from Norman Manley's time, I would not be able to identify this document as a PNP document. I don't think Michael Manley would either!
The document fails to articulate a progressive view of the state at a time when - if the framers were rigorously "data-driven, evidence-based" as they claim - there is an abundance of empirical evidence demonstrating the need for a developmental state in this crisis-ridden era of global capitalism. The section on 'The New Role of the State in the 21st Century' is disappointing beyond description. This so-called Progressive Agenda marginalises the role of the State to the technocratic and facilitatory, mouthing phrases that could easily be written by G2K. In fact, I was wondering whether they had not plagiarised the work of the Golding-appointed Public Sector Transformation Unit! Read pages 38-42.
Manipulation of language
It sees only "a catalytic role for the State in situations where the private sector deems the risks to be uneconomic". This is not a progressive view of the State. The World Bank, in its authoritative World Development Report in 1997, came out with a much more progressive view of the State than the PNP in its progressive agenda!
The State must do more than promote efficiency, transparency, reduce corruption and bridge the implementation deficit, as the conservative PNP advises. It must express a "preferential option for the poor" and it must steer economic and social policies toward a truly people-centred approach to development. You can't outsource that responsibility to the market. And this is what is being passed off as a Progressive Agenda? Only in this partisan and tribalistic society could this manipulation of language take place without an outcry from genuine progressives.
In terms of evidence-based research, much valuable work has been done by scholars such as Joseph Stiglitz, Dani Rodrik, Ha-Joon Chang, Paul Krugman, Erik Reinert and others on the pivotal role of the State in economic development. The framers of this document should have drawn on that international work to make this a truly Progressive Agenda. Instead, what we are served with is unvarnished neoliberalism. How can this be an alternative to the Golding-Shaw model?
For complete commentary: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2...us/focus1.html
As a rule, I don’t call out posters. However, knowing your interest -- indeed passion -- for the pluses and minuses of JLPNP political, social and economic agenda, I suspect you might have insightful observations on today’s commentary by Ian Boyne.
A non-Progressive Agenda
Published: Sunday | August 21, 2011
Ian Boyne, Contributor
The long-awaited, highly anticipated, much-touted Progressive Agenda was finally unveiled - to an apparently widespread "what's that?" yawn among non-partisans and Labourites.
The disappointment with it has been palpable, judging from comments in media. There are several reasons for that. One, as the People's National Party (PNP) has been having a field day kicking around the Golding administration, people have been asking, "What's your alternative?" and we had been hearing about a developing Progressive Agenda. So expectation had built up that this document would spell out alternatives and programmes. The PNP was not stating that, mark you. But this impression had been formed. Weeks before the launch last Wednesday on Garvey's birthday, PNP spokespersons, already sensing that many would be disappointed in not seeing enough specifics, had begun to state very clearly that the Progressive Agenda was "not a manifesto" and that that would come nearer to the election. The Progressive Agenda is a framework, a philosophical outline, an approach to governance, they have been stressing. Fine.
Monumentally deficient
And it is precisely in that context that I find it monumentally deficient. This is a difficult task for me emotionally, because I have known and highly respected Winston 'Winty' Davidson since the 1970s, when he was parliamentary secretary under Michael Manley and I was working with the administration as a feature writer; and Anthony Hylton I have had enormous respect for. These two men are fine, serious intellectuals who have been passionate about their work on the Progressive Agenda. They have also approached their work with the utmost humility and have been highly consultative. So it is hard for me to be as critical as I intend to be and not care about their feelings, but the discipline of journalism demands no less on my part.
The 62-page Progressive Agenda is a misnomer. If you doubt me, send it to any political science department in the world and ask any first-year student what's progressive about it, knowing what progressive means in political science. In fact, this document represents a repudiation of progressive ideas. I can't think of a single page in this document that a sensible Labourite could not agree with in principle. So, philosophically, there is nothing here which separates and marks off the PNP from the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Now this might not be a bad thing in the thinking of consensus-hungry Jamaicans. But don't market it as distinctly progressive or PNP. It represents no ideological alternative to this Golding administration.
So many of the generalities, platitudes and clichés which inundate this document can easily be found in documents produced under JLP administrations. I know, for having worked as a communications professional with all political administrations since the 1970s, I have read more government policy documents than I care to remember. In fact, without the PNP's trademark on it, and knowing what I know about the PNP from Norman Manley's time, I would not be able to identify this document as a PNP document. I don't think Michael Manley would either!
The document fails to articulate a progressive view of the state at a time when - if the framers were rigorously "data-driven, evidence-based" as they claim - there is an abundance of empirical evidence demonstrating the need for a developmental state in this crisis-ridden era of global capitalism. The section on 'The New Role of the State in the 21st Century' is disappointing beyond description. This so-called Progressive Agenda marginalises the role of the State to the technocratic and facilitatory, mouthing phrases that could easily be written by G2K. In fact, I was wondering whether they had not plagiarised the work of the Golding-appointed Public Sector Transformation Unit! Read pages 38-42.
Manipulation of language
It sees only "a catalytic role for the State in situations where the private sector deems the risks to be uneconomic". This is not a progressive view of the State. The World Bank, in its authoritative World Development Report in 1997, came out with a much more progressive view of the State than the PNP in its progressive agenda!
The State must do more than promote efficiency, transparency, reduce corruption and bridge the implementation deficit, as the conservative PNP advises. It must express a "preferential option for the poor" and it must steer economic and social policies toward a truly people-centred approach to development. You can't outsource that responsibility to the market. And this is what is being passed off as a Progressive Agenda? Only in this partisan and tribalistic society could this manipulation of language take place without an outcry from genuine progressives.
In terms of evidence-based research, much valuable work has been done by scholars such as Joseph Stiglitz, Dani Rodrik, Ha-Joon Chang, Paul Krugman, Erik Reinert and others on the pivotal role of the State in economic development. The framers of this document should have drawn on that international work to make this a truly Progressive Agenda. Instead, what we are served with is unvarnished neoliberalism. How can this be an alternative to the Golding-Shaw model?
For complete commentary: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2...us/focus1.html
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