Leadership by Ja’s CEO
When things are headed in the wrong direction in Jamaica we relentlessly, and often mercilessly, castigate especially our prime minister. By the same token, when things are going in the right direction we need to give credit to the managers of our national affairs. It’s the right/decent thing to do.Prime Minister Andrew Holness is the principal manager of our national affairs. The primary duties of Jamaica’s prime minister, primus inter pares, meaning first among equals, are two-fold. First and foremost, our prime minister has a non-negotiable duty to promote/defend our interests/image abroad. Second, he has a sacrosanct duty to do all that is humanly possible to improve the condition of Jamaicans. Any objective assessment of Dr Holness’s stewardship as a whole must centre on how he has delivered vis-à-vis the mentioned primary duties, and not some fly-by-night imaginings or yardsticks.Charles Peguy, renowned essayist, famously said: “He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.” We must resist miserabillists, intellectual contortionists, and fake news purveyors.STATESMAN ABROADNearly five decades ago, Harold Macmillan, the British conservative politician who was prime minister of the United Kingdom (UK) from 1957 to 1963, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), said this: “When I am at home, I am politician. When I am abroad, I am always, first and foremost, a statesman.”Only those who are great strangers to the truth will say that Prime Minister Holness has not been a statesman abroad. Unlike some who are auditioning for political office, Dr Holness has represented Jamaica abroad with admirable dignity and style. In 2018, when Holness, together with the President of France Emmanuel Macron, was asked by the secretary general of the UN Antonio Guterres to lead a political initiative to mobilise climate financing to support the implementation of the Paris Agreement, Holness did not present as a man who suffered with impostor syndrome. When Holness had bilateral discussions with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, we did not see him “buck shuffle” (lacking in confidence or indecisive), as we say in the streets. While attending the 79th UN General Assembly in September 2024, Holness held talks with Haiti’s Prime Minister Garry Conille. The talks centred on the security situation in the French-speaking Caricom country. Holness did not present as a “frighten Friday” meaning someone who uses politics as a means of satisfying their status deficits. When Holness, in January 2024, met with visiting members of the Political Bureau of the the Chinese Communist Party (CPC), Central Committee, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in Kingston, he did not behave like a “never see come see”, meaning someone who gets absorbed by the trappings of State office and forgets their obligations to the people.Those who are uncomfortable in the castle of their skins are dangerous. I am taking slight liberties here with the title of the seminal publication In The Castle of My Skin, by famed author Earl Lovelace.Holness fits easily and effortlessly into the global political and diplomatic arenas. He does not put on airs and he demonstrates an authentic appreciation especially for leaders of and countries that share the brutal experiences of slavery and colonialism. I recall that when Paul Kagame, president of the Republic of Rwanda, paid a State visit to Jamaica in April 2022, media reportage showed Holness exhibiting great sensitivity in his references to the genocide which took place in Rwanda in the early 90s, which was rooted in a history of economic, social and political apartheid.Holness showed that he understood the great historical nexus between Ghana and Jamaica, as evidenced in media coverage when President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of Ghana attended the opening of the 8th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference in June 2019 as he completed a visit to several Caribbean countries.I did an exhaustive search of Holness’s representations of Jamaica abroad prior to writing this piece and I did not come upon any credible and/or verified publication in which Andrew Holness, either as leader of the Opposition or prime minister, was ever flagged for unstatesman-like conduct internationally. I cannot say the same for others who are now vying for political office.I am a subscriber to Harold Macmillan’s dictum. We must never berate our country abroad. Those who have spoken ill and/or have sullied Jamaica’s name, especially overseas, are unfit to hold public office in this country. Jamaica has positively matured appreciably in many areas since political independence in 1962. A big area of our growth is our collective appreciation of the natural importance of this piece of rock. Wherever Jamaicans are around the globe, we feel and maintain a great affinity for our country. Truly patriotic Jamaicans do not commit the unpardonable sin of attacking our country internationally.DELIVERING ‘AH YARD’In determining whether Dr Holness’s management of Jamaica’s national affairs have improved the quality of life and, by extension, better the life chances of especially the average Jamaican we must not lose sight of some critical realities. Jamaica’s progress has been handicapped by decades of choking debt; hugely abnormal crime rates, in particular murders; social decay; underachievement in education; corruption at many levels; institutional weaknesses; and low productivity at high and low levels. This is the quality of the clay Andrew Holness got to mould.The mentioned handicaps over many decades have trapped Jamaica into a low-wage, low-tech, and low-growth vortex. These handicaps have also helped to suffocate our national progress and, consequently, diminished respect for Jamaica, especially on the international stage. While both major political parties, with the consent of the Jamaican people, have contributed to our great worries over time, the People’s National Party’s (PNP) crippling mismanagement of especially the economic affairs of this country each time in Jamaica House, except for the period from January 2012 to February 2016 while Portia Simpson Miller was prime minister and Dr Peter Phillips was de fact prime minister, cannot be hid under a bushel. I previously outlined in this space verified facts to substantiate my conclusion that the PNP applied a veritable wrecking ball to Jamaica’s economy, but for a single instance.Has Dr Holness positively moved the needle on Jamaica’s ‘deliver-O-metre’? Resoundingly, yes! He continues to competently mould the economic, social and political clay which he inherited. Dr Holness has done a very good job as Jamaica’s CEO, overwhelming and verified evidence attest to that fact.For starters, our macroeconomic variables are the best they have ever been. We now have record low inflation, the lowest unemployment since records have been kept, a stable dollar, the highest-ever net international reserves (NIR), absence of debilitating capital flight, positive international credit ratings, increasing expenditure on big capital projects, and last week our Minister of Finance and the Public Service Fayval Williams told the country that: “After almost a decade of fiscal restructuring, Jamaica is on a path to achieving a debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio of below 70 per cent by the end of the 2024/25 fiscal year.” This is a big deal. Why? Choking debt is the grim reaper of especially developing countries.Recall that, “By 2013 Jamaica’s public debt had reached a historic high of about 147 per cent of GDP, making it one of the most-indebted countries in the world,” says the International Monetary Fund (IMF).We consequently were forced to start to think and behave reasonably after decades of foolishness and irrationality. We were forced to fast-track the economic recovery programme started by Prime Minister Bruce Golding and Finance and Public Service Minister Audley Shaw in 2010.Like the results of especially national elections, lower national debt has consequences. The Holness Administration in the last 5 years has been able to acquire hundreds of new buses to upgrade the Jamaica Urban Transit Company’s (JUTC) fleet. Hundreds of new vehicles for the security forces have been bought in the last 7 years. Dozens of police stations have been repaired and massive extensions and improvements to related facilities for the Jamaica Constabulary Force, (JCF) and the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) have been completed. The improvements to court buildings across the country, removal of tuition fees to access courses at HEART/NTA, the establishment of dozens of scholarships for students, the maintenance of the no-obligatory fee structure at the secondary school level, the removal of guarantor requirements for Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB) assistance, expansion of homeownership facilities through the National Housing Trust (NHT), the massive rehabilitation of roads and bridges country-wide, the improvements to numerous public facilities, increased small business loan options, social pension and housing programmes, water projects, and I could go on. When the international benchmarks for the assessment of a prime minister which I mentioned are dispassionately applied it is clear that Dr Holness and the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), which he leads, is delivering.The mentioned positive rises on the ‘deliver-O-metre’ cannot be minimised by the peddling of fake news. And contrary to what some with especially “vaulting ambition” would want us to believe, the average Jamaicans who are reaping the benefits are not sleeping at Calvary Cemetery.Of course, everything is not hunky-dory. Jamaica still has a far, far way to go. Those who are not suffering with convenient loss of memory know that it took Jamaica nearly 15 years to reach this juncture of macroeconomic stability. It is time for meaningful economic growth. One does not need a degree in economics to understand that without economic growth there are fewer tax receipts, poorer public services, lower and/or stunted remuneration for public sector workers, plus much higher taxes for everyone. Lack of economic growth means greater hardships.Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition Mark Golding, who has been campaigning for the last three years, says he agrees that growth is the best way forward. To date he has not told us how he would grow the economy in a meaningful way if he became prime minister. That Dr Holness has positively moved the ‘deliver-O-metre’ to tangibly benefit the majority of Jamaicans cannot be successfully contested.Next week I will name my remaining four top performers in the Holness Cabinet.Garfield Higgins is an educator, and journalist. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.
