Robert Buddan, Contributor
DON ANDERSON'S polls of November show that the People's National Party goes into its last National Executive Council (NEC) meeting for 2005 in good shape against the Jamaica Labour Party, and that party president P.J. Patterson enters what might be his last NEC as president with his leadership credentials intact.
Sixty per cent of the way through its fourth term, the PNP has as good a chance as the JLP to win the next elections, if not better. For 2005, the net popular advantage to the PNP has been 6.7 per cent. Two polls showed statistical dead heats (one marginally to the JLP, one to the PNP) and one poll in early 2005 strongly favoured the PNP at the height of the acrimonious leadership changes in the JLP.
In the final analysis, however, the PNP has at least as good a chance of winning the next elections 16 years after returning to power in 1989. Things might get even worse for the JLP. If Portia Simpson Miller wins the presidency of the PNP, it could be a shoo-in for the PNP and this must be Mr. Golding's worst nightmare. If Dr. Phillips wins, he could still do to Mr. Golding what Mr. Patterson did to Mr. Seaga.
STABLE RANGE OF SUPPORT
Leadership image aside, the party in government has been able to maintain a stable range of support. Its popular ratings have held to between 30 per cent and 35 per cent in this year's Anderson polls. People are also more certain in their identification with PNP leaders, especially Portia Simpson Miller who is the only one able to command as much as 50 per cent support or more. In contrast, the JLP's support fluctuates much more widely, from 24 per cent to 34 per cent, and Mr. Golding has not carved out a clear confirmation of his leadership.
The Anderson polls show that most Jamaicans who support Portia Simpson Miller's candidacy believe it is time that a woman becomes prime minister of Jamaica. This is not good enough reason. Maxine Henry-Wilson, who heads Dr. Phillips' campaign, says, quite rightly, that we should support candidates based on leadership qualities and visionary ideas for Jamaica's future rather than by their gender. It is Dr. Phillips who most people believe has the better leadership qualities. As Arnold Bertram has also pointed out, Dr. Phillips has the confidence of those in leadership positions in the Cabinet and in Parliament. In other words, he strikes both the public and the PNP leadership as the person best suited to lead.
The candidate who ultimately wins must take lessons from the different campaigns and fashion a leadership programme out of them. That programme should have a strategy that can combine five things: the activist and engaged leadership promised by Karl Blythe, the economic discipline promised by Omar Davies, the mobilisation of small and medium enterprises emphasised by Peter Phillips, the sense of caring and grassroots connectedness that comes from Portia Simpson Miller, and the stress on unity and governance found in Mr. Patterson. These are essential ingredients of the leadership that Jamaica would do best with. To come to this position requires starting from a philosophy of leadership and development. Leadership plans must take the following into account.
IMPERSONAL LEADERSHIP
First, Jamaicans do not like impersonal leadership. They do not want cold and impersonal managerialism. They expect to have that personal leadership that is visible in the communities and that is working with the issues closest to people's everyday lives - water, crime, roads, transportation, and so on. This is how political leadership started in Jamaica in the communities. This more intimate form of politics lost ground as power became more centralised and politics more urban-based.
It is this loss of personal intimacy and local advocacy that Karl Blythe sees most clearly. It is his attempt to restore the localism that was displaced by urbanism and under greater threat from globalism. Blythe believes that leaders must find time to get out of their offices, walk among the people, see how they live, and let them know that they are not the forgotten and invisible mass.
Second, Jamaicans need to know that their leaders care. In this age of governance, markets, regionalism, and globalisation, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that these structures only make sense to people when they are about those very people. Jamaicans were attracted to Manley and Bustamante because they demonstrated that they cared. They were close to people-based organisations like trade unions and community groups. In this age of governance and markets, the state and economy must become more people-friendly. The market must become a people-based structure. This is what we should mean when we talk about a friendly macroeconomic environment. Portia Simpson Miller is clearly seen as the person who will draw upon the Manley-Bustamante tradition of Jamaican politics - compassion for the underclass. It is those people who were passed over in the first wave of industrialisation.
EMPHASIS ON SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES
To bring people to the market and the market to people, there must be an emphasis like never before, on small and medium enterprises. It is not enough to have the majority depending on a minority to invest so that they can get jobs. Those who wish to work for themselves are left on the margins of the informal economy. Leadership needs to bring them into the economic mainstream and connect them to the formal market. They need capital, credit, utilities, investment plans, factory space, stores, tax incentives, all of which were provided to the first generation of business people during the industrialisation of the 1950s and 1960s. It is now time for a second wave of industrialisation, one that brings in thousands of small and medium enterprises into the economy in the next three years. It is on this that Peter Phillips is clearest.
INVESTMENT BONDS FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
But to do this, one has to have funds. With our tight budget and tax-weary public, Jamaica has to go to the market to sell investment bonds for human development. If it is to be able to get the best market rates, Jamaica must balance its budget and keep inflation down. It needs discipline over the budget and the confidence of the financial market. The global financial market offers opportunities to develop human development bonds for investments by the Jamaican and Caribbean diaspora, the credit union movement and the mainstream capital markets, and quite rightly, they need to see the policies that would pay back their investments. This is the strength of Omar Davies' macroeconomic strategy. The tight management of the budget will strengthen Jamaica's credit standing on capital markets.
It makes good sense for the new PNP leadership to combine the best from all the campaigns and this would have the added benefit of promoting a unified party. If I might add one more ingredient, it would be the need for a ministry of human development, one that would be a ministry to do all of the above - bring people and market together - to make human enterprise work for human development. The lessons of governance would have to be brought to bear to make this the most effective and efficient ministry possible, so that every penny spent has maximum value for people. At the end of the day, leadership plans must put people at the centre of development.
You can send your comments to the Department of Government at: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
