BY WHATEVER name it comes to be called we think it is vital that the public and private sectors of this nation should maintain dialogue about the matters affecting all of us. So Vale Royal Summit, Partnership for Progress, or whatever, the gamesmanship is irrelevant.
The public business is not the private reserve of the political parties; certainly not of the ruling People's National Party which has formed the Government Administration for 14 long years. And since the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party is part of the parliamentary segment of the Administration their sitting representatives in House and Senate are entitled to help determine how the public business is dealt with.
All of this is supposed to be done on behalf of the general populace, whether they be supporters of one party or the other, or of no party at all. When the legislators meet in Parliament, policies clash or intertwine according to the ideology of contending views, and some compromise is reached in the process that is the essence of democratic procedure.
Except at Cabinet level, the process is everybody's business. So it is legitimate for private sector interests to seek to influence the policies and programmes emanating from the Parliament. Especially so when politics tends to flow along the fault lines of rigid commitment to party policy.
It should not be assumed that all wisdom and expertise resides within the bureaucracy of government. That is why the intervention of business and interests outside of the government administration is wise and valuable.
Against this theoretical background we beseech the Government to come clean with all the financial data the public is entitled to hear. And we call on the Opposition to abandon the negativity that borders so closely on an ultimatum to resort to forceful action.
The sense of crisis in the land is best countered with cool and calm debate by all shareholders of the public weal, rather than the heated exchanges that are precursor to physical warfare.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
