Yuku free message boards
Username or E-mail:
Password:
Forgot
Password?
Sign Up
Grab the Yuku app
Search:
RSS
Email
Flayva Interactive
>
Under The Mango Tree
>
The JLP: Wake Me When It's Over
0 Points
Search this Topic:
Remove this ad
«Prev
1
2
3
4
5
6
Next»
Jump
Forum Jump
Under The Mango Tree
<< Previous Topic
Next Topic >>
Re: The JLP: Wake Me When It's Over
Author
Comment
dine1
PNP and the IMF
#1
[-]
Posts
: 1392
Dec 11 03 8:26 AM
More
My Recent Posts
PNP dj vu, religious freedom
Mark Wignall
Thursday, December 11, 2003
TODAY I want to address two issues, the first of which has elements of dj vu mixed well in it. The second has not been discussed much and it has passed as just another news item gone astray.
The first item is the state of the economy under the PNP. The second is the report that the two main evangelical theological educational institutions have plans to form themselves into a university.
Before the December 1976 elections when political violence was the norm and the Michael Manley-led PNP had locked up key JLP persons such as Pearnel Charles, "Babsy" Grange and Earl Spencer under the National State of Emergency, the Agency for Public Information (API), the name the PNP briefly gave to the JIS, had government ads on radio and TV telling us how the country was progressing and forging ahead.
Quite a number of us bought the line, especially that Seaga and West Kingston were devils incarnate, and were even willing to forgive the PNP and the police force for the excesses they used almost right through the entire State of Emergency.
We pretended that we did not know that some key JLP activists were picked up by the police two days before the election and released on December 16. So gullible were we at the time.
In 1976 when I first voted, the PNP did not have to do much to convince me to vote for it. Four years previous to that when Michael Manley won the February 1972 election and pushed out the very nice but increasingly ineffective Hugh Shearer, I was just a touch over 21 years of age. All of my friends and I were acolytes of Manley and thought that he was the closest thing to an earthly god.
By April of 1997 the truth hit home and, having recognised the national deceit, I swore that at the next elections I would teach the PNP a lesson. Presently the IMF is in town and if the past is anything to go by, recent pronouncements by Finance Minister Omar Davies may be nothing more than an attempt to lead us 'round the mulberry bush. Dj vu?
Davies has been at pains to tell us that there will be no borrowing programme with the fund and that the PNP is capable of designing its own programme. If there is one indicator that the country is close to being considered bankrupt, it is in the non-receipt of funds by some of the poor relief councils in Jamaica. Now, one would expect that if the country was in deep trouble in its revenue expectations but still had funds to keep the police force going, the hospitals open, pay the teachers and do so with confidence, then if a policeman lodged his cheque in the bank today it would be made good in another week or so.
But to deny the poor the paltry sums these destitute people need just to eat to stay alive is tantamount to an admittance that the country is stone broke. Davies knows that should this country re-enter into a borrowing programme with the IMF, then between now and 2007 (at least), the ruling administration in this country will be the IMF.
The usual demands will be made on the size of Government, and a structured cutback over maybe five years in civil service staffing, even more downsizing in public works and the expected pressure on what is left of our dollar will be the norm. Davies knows that the PNP will be a not-so-innocent bystander for the next four years as the austerity measures take hold and the country pays for the horrible mismanagement of old socialists parading as 21st century technocrats and fiscal magicians. Even a failed businessman like Seaga will start to look good in that scenario.
Open government is what P J Patterson promised us in 1993. Davies ought to remember that.
www.jamaicaobserver.com/c...REEDOM.asp
<< Previous Topic
Next Topic >>
Forum Jump
Under The Mango Tree
Share This
Email to Friend
del.icio.us
Digg it
Facebook
Blogger
Yahoo MyWeb
«Prev
1
2
3
4
5
6
Next»
Jump
Flayva Interactive
>
Under The Mango Tree
>
The JLP: Wake Me When It's Over
Click to subscribe by RSS
Click to receive E-mail notifications of replies