Charles
Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
PEARNEL CHARLES, gearing up to seek the leadership of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party, has identified education as the priority he would pursue in a future Government, with 20 per cent of the Budget being allocated to this sector.
"If 20 per cent of the Budget is what is needed to educate the people of Jamaica and to have them properly trained and have a skill, then we're going to put it there," Mr. Charles told The Sunday Gleaner.
A year ago the Government and Opposition agreed in Parliament to, among other things, increase to 15 per cent over five years, the share of the national budget going to education, recognising the primacy of better education to national development. In the first national Budget presented since then, however, the Government was accused of reneging on its commitment for the first instalment of that increased allocation, reflecting the difficulties faced by the country, overburdened by its debt obligations and competing domestic demands.
According to Mr. Charles, some of these other demands should be set aside in the short term in favour of better educating the nation's children.
"I believe that if people were educated they would know how to protect themselves, health-wise; we'd probably be able to cut hospital bills by a third, having well-educated people driving on the streets and being able to reason, saves lives. If you go into the inner-city communities where people are unable to relate to each other just because they are unable to read and write and reasonably transmit to each other their feelings without resort to the knife and the gun, we'd be so much better off as a country," he argued.
The decision by JLP Leader Edward Seaga to retire from the leadership of the party in November has opened up the possibility of 67-year-old Pearnel Charles fulfilling his often expressed desire to lead the party and Jamaica one day. His prospects were significantly boosted when seven other senior members of the party, some of them known to have been harbouring leadership ambitions themselves, agreed to put those aside and back him as a consensus candidate to go up against the party's chairman, Bruce Golding, in the November election to choose the next JLP leader.
Word has come recently however that Audley Shaw, one member of that so-called Group of Eight, could possibly back out of the agreement and launch his own leadership bid.
"Under normal circumstances, any man of the calibre of a leader would stand by his decision," was Mr. Charles curt response to that development. Nevertheless he professed no great concern about the prospect of a run for the leadership by Audley Shaw. "I don't want to be unfair to him; he has that right, although I believe it would be better for me if he and those who support him were behind me," he said.
A similarly cool response was given to the prospect of going up against his brother-in-law, Bruce Golding, for the JLP leadership, suggesting that Mr. Golding would do well to support his own candidacy.
"I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Bruce Golding supporting me, because I definitely would find Bruce Golding and others welcome lieutenants in the development that I'm proceeding with," he quipped.
The veteran trade unionist is promising that, if elected leader of the JLP, and ultimately Prime Minister, he would provide leadership in the mould of two former labour leaders and Prime Ministers, Alexander Busta-mante and Hugh Shearer.
"These two leaders promoted the economic development of the country while not ignoring the interests of the poor and disadvantaged in the society," he asserted.
