Whose national movement?

[Karl]

"The JLP mantra believing that the people are fools has had them in the political wilderness for years! Trust me, whatever choices the people make in the coming elections will be based on thoughtful analysis of the facts on the current state of the country.

Those harping that the people are fools...unnuh guh-weh!"

The JLP has been in the 'political wilderness' because of the formation of something called the NDM.


Don't you get tired of spouting nonsense ?

"thoughtful analysis of the facts on the current state of the country."

LOL !!

You are a real joker.

Why do you believe the PNP engages in large infrastructure projects that take 15 years to complete and wait until election year to engage in largess in social programmes and otherwise ? You think the PNP 'political intelligencia' are fools ? They understand what makes the masses tick.. SHORT TERM FEEL GOOD and panders to these.

What do you think 'More cyar, gyal and cellphone' was about ?

You are so out of touch it is ridiculous.

...and, you think the majority of the people are sitting around awaiting Goverment largess? ...and, you dere speak of someone being ridiculous?

For your information, just as those in the 'so-called higher levels of society' plan and work towards upward mobility...using there God-given 'thinking process' so do the majority of our people. Only you JLPites fail to see, even as like the rest of us you all started from humble barefoot circumstances, that there has been a mighty move upwards in all families.

Relatives, friends and acquaintances have moved into the professional, vocational classes...have advanced in private sector and public sector jobs, have started businesses...have gathered the means to further education, have remained in Jamaica and some have left her shores...all working to and being activiely involved in having families advance. The same education system that you all claim is the pits has proven the base on which our families, friends and acquaintances use as launching pad to 'better'. You really think people have time to waste sitting and awaiting hand-outs from any source? You really think we are all fools...and, in you all reside all commonsense?

Mi seh hit areadi -unnuh fi guhweh! We are not denying that production of goods and services should and must be improved...but, to even think that the people are sitting around on their hands awaiting any type of largess is typical of those 'looking down noses' at the rest of us. Keep looking down unnuh nose, man...keep it up!

[Muadib]

...and, you think the majority of the people are sitting around awaiting Goverment largess? ...and, you dere speak of someone being ridiculous?

For your information, just as those in the 'so-called higher levels of society' plan and work towards upward mobility...using there God-given 'thinking process' so do the majority of our people. Only you JLPites fail to see, even as like the rest of us you all started from humble barefoot circumstances, that there has been a mighty move upwards in all families.

Relatives, friends and acquaintances have moved into the professional, vocational classes...have advanced in private sector and public sector jobs, have started businesses...have gathered the means to further education, have remained in Jamaica and some have left her shores...all working to and being activiely involved in having families advance. The same education system that you all claim is the pits has proven the base on which our families, friends and acquaintances use as launching pad to 'better'. You really think people have time to waste sitting and awaiting hand-outs from any source? You really think we are all fools...and, in you all reside all commonsense?

Mi seh hit areadi -unnuh fi guhweh! We are not denying that production of goods and services should and must be improved...but, to even think that the people are sitting around on their hands awaiting any type of largess is typical of those 'looking down noses' at the rest of us. Keep looking down unnuh nose, man...keep it up!

You obviously are not aware of exactly how many votes are required to win certain constituencies.. do the math.. approximately 750,000 people voted in the last election, 390 Thousand for the PNP,.. there are 60 constituencies.. there are going rates for votes and people obtain JOBS based on their voting pattern.. how else do you think PJ Patterson can threaten 'sucking salt through a wooden spoon'.. as I said before.. you are so far out of touch it is ridiculous...

If you do not understand the fundamental reality that peoples VOTES determine their livelihood well... yuh nuh ready fi dis yet. A large portion of the voting population DEPENDS on Govt projects, road works and otherwise for their livelihood.. stop this pretense Karl.. please..

[Willi]

Karl, Wignall said the same thing about election sweeties:

Which party runs Jamaica better?
Mark Wignall
Thursday, July 19, 2007


One day last week I tuned in to Perkins On Line and heard him in conversation with the PNP's Andrew Okola, a seemingly bright young man. The discussion centred on the fact that in the period after independence, there had been periods of "respectable" growth under JLP governments while in the case of the PNP, the main factor dogging the period of its administration has been negative to poor growth rates in the economy.
Okola accepted the point, warned Perkins that it could take some time to explain and the talk-show host gave him the platform. It was the standard explanation. As it went, in the days of cold war politics between NATO-aligned countries, led by the USA and the Warsaw pact allies, led by Russia, the aid and assistance inflows from the USA to countries like Jamaica were influenced mainly by the politics practised by the recipient country.
In other words, Jamaica was able to register growth rates of at least six per cent per annum in the time of the JLP administration of 1962 to 1972 because of a convergence between the direction and the "colour" of the local politics and the amounts the US had allocated for countries like Jamaica. In the 1972 to 1980 period when Michael Manley "threatened" Jamaica with democratic socialism, the State Department unleashed on us its czar, Henry Kissinger, who issued his own brand of threats. From 1974 to 1980, under a PNP administration, growth rates fell by 25 per cent.
When the JLP administration operated between 1980 and February 1989, Seaga was seen as America's man in the Caribbean. By Okola's reasoning the JLP was able to begin registering growth rates of six per cent per annum between 1985 and 1989 only because the US was pouring more aid our way, second only to that given to Israel.
By the time Michael Manley returned in his free-market dispensation in early 1989, even if America was prepared to support him on the basis of his ideological change, the motions of power in the world had caught up with him. According to Okola, with the change to a unipolar world, the focus (and the market shifts?) of America moved to Europe, hence Jamaica felt the brunt of this and has been experiencing it under the present administration.
As I listened, I expected Perkins to ask him the question staring both of them in the face. That question is: How come other countries, like ourselves in the region, with the exception of Guyana and Haiti, continued to register respectable growth rates while Jamaica was suffering in the 1990s and 2000s under this "unipolar" world syndrome?
I believe Okola meant well, but his argument just did not hold up, what with countries like St Kitts, St Lucia, St Vincent, Suriname, Antigua, Belize and Grenada holding their own and posting respectable rates of growth in the time when Jamaica was lagging behind.
In my view, the PNP has been able to hold on to power for 18 years because of two basic reasons or the combination of both. The first was the reality of Eddie Seaga as JLP Opposition leader. An autocratic leader in his time, Seaga's politics, especially in his party, seemed to have been, "Do as I say because is me say so." The second was the PNP supplanting developmental politics with issues that made the PNP visible. In the 1970s it was the crash programme. In the 1990s it was the giveaway, at constituency level, of goodies such as chickens and goats for rearing, free or subsidised fertiliser and seeds, and in the latter part of its run, it has been the holding of carnivals (Cricket World Cup) and the building of monuments (bus park in Half-Way-Tree, stadium in Trelawny).
In all of these instances, areas necessary to the building of this country's future (education, health care, security, utilities, general-service delivery), have been watered down while the electorate has been fooled into believing that the stadium in Trelawny, the bus park and the promise of more big-head goats is as much as "The politics" will ever deliver.
It is also my belief that the politics as practised by the PNP is all that the collective will of the PNP can conjure up. I also believe that the socialist syndrome of the 1970s is still alive and that the PNP has never really moved far from its redistributionist phase of that time. In my view, the PNP has long learnt that "building an economy" warrants sacrifice in certain areas. If the PNP should decide that for a policy to be expanded on, say, education or health care, it was necessary for the government to tag on an extra tax on cellphone purchases, one can be certain that in a matter of days there would be rioting in the streets.
The people want affordable cellphones. They also want free health care. And just basic freeness.
After the economic ravages of the 1970s under the very likeable Michael Manley, it took Eddie Seaga about six years to began to buoy up the economy. The PNP government of the early 1990s was not too far removed from its democratic socialist stirrings of the 1970s. When it acquired the reins of government in its second bite of the cherry since independence, it was caught at sea with the free-market model thrust upon it.
Having no mindset to deal with non-distributive policies/politics, the PNP did what it thought it knew best. It set about the building of a black entrepreneurial class and then clinically destroyed it by its own monetary policies. Its unfamiliarity with a free-market economy was best exemplified in the meltdown of the financial sector in the mid-1990s.
The building of that black business class made the PNP visible. When it failed, the PNP skilfully manoeuvred itself out of the mess and claimed that it was poor business practice - on the part of the business people - which resulted in the failure.
Matters which will have increasing importance in the 2000s such as education and the environment are not "sexy" issues which will keep the PNP's visibility high. It needs more carnivals, monuments and another crash programme. That will not build the people and the nation, but it will keep them hungry and looking toward the source who they believe will first place "a little som'ting in di han' ".
The extent to which the people will judge both the PNP and the JLP as we head into an election will be dependent on how weary the electorate has grown of paltry handouts and monuments. And of course, the unknown factor in the JLP may prove to be that party's undoing, or its greatest asset.
- observemark@gmail.com