Dawn Ritch, Contributor
PRIME Minister P. J. Patterson assures us that our debt crisis is not as bad as Argentina's, and a JLP Government is no less scandalous than a PNP one. Wrong on both counts.
In order to prove his point, however, Prime Minister Patterson made specific reference to a road in the parish of Manchester which was constructed by a JLP administration at a cost of $10.5 million prior to the 1972 general election. This reference from a Government that wastes hundreds of millions of dollars on jobs in the information technology sector which don't appear, and then settles out of court with the same United States company in order it says, to avoid higher legal bills.
Simultaneously, Mr. Patter-son's administration pays out billions of dollars in cost overruns to favoured PNP contractors, yet wants the country to be alarmed about a $10.5M Government contract in the 1960s. There is just no comparison. The scale is altogether and breathtakingly different.
There was once a JLP Minister of Government now deceased, who was widely known as "Minister Ten Per Cent". I admired him greatly and still do. Black, elegant, articulate, cultivated, and curiously honourable. It was believed in the 1960s that no economic development nor jobs were created in Jamaica without his getting 10 per cent of the action. He was never Prime Minister, and I've always regretted that Jamaica was not represented at the highest level by such a magnificent human specimen. Neither, to my great disappointment, was he knighted by the Queen. Nevertheless, he contributed hugely to the widespread prosperity of the time, as well as allegedly to his own, by being a visionary of great energy and commitment to Jamaica. Ten more "kick-back" artists like him, and Jamaica would have been so economically and socially advanced that not even the PNP could have torn it down as they have.
From that entire period of early development in Jamaica, Mr. Patterson can only come up with a measly $10 million road? Well at least he found the road, which is more than we can say for either Mr. Patterson's industries or his jobs, and this after having squandered billions of dollars of public funds. Every time the PNP gains power, they hold Commissions of Enquiry into the operations of the previous JLP administrations. It happened after 1972 when they won and held an Enquiry into "Missing Schools", which it was subsequently found were never missing in the first place. Then again in 1989 there were more PNP enquiries into the previous JLP administration and nothing was found wrong or scandalous there either.
Fraud
In a separate matter, one JLP Minister, still living, was found to have committed money fraud in the farm worker programme, was subsequently incarcerated, served his time and is today living privately and quietly. If it seems I have a fondness for ex-JLP Ministers of Government, it's only because I've been through two JLP administrations and two PNP administrations.
In my opinion the JLP is vastly superior when it comes to the stewardship of the country's resources. PNP president and Prime Minister Patterson is whistling in the dark therefore, to hope to be able to make revelations about former JLP scandals in Government. If there was one of any note whatsoever, he would have brought it out long ago. Compared with the PNP, a JLP Government is positively boring. I could do with some of that boredom right now. But it seems like we're fated not to have it.
Not only is the Prime Minister wrong about the JLP being anywhere as scandalous as the PNP, but he's wrong about Argentines too. In his recent broadcast Mr. Patterson was most self-congratulatory about not doing what Argentina did in the economic management of his own country. I'm not quite sure what he means by this, but if the suggestion is that we're better off than Argentina from a debt point of view, then he is terminally wrong. From a public debt perspective, Argentina's per capita income in 1998 was about US$8,000 with a national output (gross domestic product) of US$300 billion of which national debt was 50 per cent. In Jamaica per capita income in 2000 was about US$2,500 with a GDP of US$6.5 billion, of which national debt is close to 150 per cent.
Now why is Mr. Patterson pleased that the debt in relation to the average income of every Jamaican is three times as high as that of every Argentine? Let us not forget that he recently sent off his Finance Minister Dr. Omar Davies, to borrow US$700 million more abroad. The same Finance Minister who recently informed us that debt service obligations will represent 62.4 per cent of total Government expenditure. No doubt that figure too will rise, and he reminds us that we will be paying the debt for generations to come. Yet they continue to waste billions of Jamaican dollars, and borrow hundreds of millions more American dollars in a kind of state-feeding frenzy.
More amazing still is that they continue to be lent money by overseas interests, just as Argentina was. And this, despite the fact that a recent review by the World Bank on financing to Jamaica reported that only about 40 cents in every borrowed dollar is of any benefit to the Jamaican people. Nevertheless, our Government continues to go abroad to borrow money, and continues to be lent it in ever increasing quantities.
Loose fiscal policy
The Economist published an article in its March 2-8 issue on the Argentinian economic crisis which bears a strong resemblance to what is happening in Jamaica. It stated: "A second school of thought holds that the problem was not the currency board itself, but its undermining by loose fiscal policy... investors were happy to go on lending to the government. Instead of printing money, as in the bad old days, it printed bonds to finance its fiscal deficit... Much spending was inefficient, and involved corruption... the IMF was too tolerant for too long of Argentina's combination of fixed exchange rates and fiscal laxity. But so were the Wall Street investment banks".
It is important to note therefore, that neither is Dr. Davies having any trouble borrowing from the overseas capital markets. They continue to pump money into Jamaica even though it is a well-documented fact that we waste it. This is most bizarre. These overseas interests and international lending agencies ought to bear some moral responsibility for being too tolerant and making our indebtedness as a country that much greater. If borrowing is an international addiction, then these institutions are the international drug dealers. It only makes our eventual collapse proportionately greater.
Considering all the foolishness he's been saying and permitting, it makes me wonder if the Prime Minister really wants to win the next general election. Perhaps losing it will be his way finally of disciplining his ministers.
