Arnold BertramAs the People's National Party (PNP) presidential election campaign gathers momentum, all eyes are focused on the delegates who will elect the successor to P.J. Patterson.
However, there is another 'electorate' which exercises a decisive influence on the success or failure of any political administration. Their names do not appear on any list of delegates for they are not card-carrying members of any political party. They are never seen at political rallies and whereas group delegates vote with ballots, they vote with their feet.
They are motivated primarily by interest, hence their support for any political administration is directly related to their confidence as investors. For them, confidence is 'suspicion gone to sleep' and it doesn't take much to awaken it. In an age of globalisation, their capital enjoys a remarkable freedom of movement from one nation state to another.
Hence, where they are, their money need not be there also. It is from the wealth that they create that the government of the day raises the revenues for public expenditure and negotiates loans for development projects.
This is the power of the economic élite in any country, particularly since the global triumph of capital, and this is a reality with which successful modern politics must contend. Power sharing and concessions are the order of the day, and among those who invest in the national economy, is the fervent hope that the next president of the PNP and Prime Minister of Jamaica will understand the complexities and challenges of economic development.
Jamaica's economic élite was not always as powerful or as mature as they are today, and even so, it is not a homogenous class. Within it, there are those who combine national responsibilities with the creation of wealth and there are those who substitute a parasitical relationship with the state for genuine enterprise. A review of the historical development of this class is instructive.
The Political Maturing of the Private Sector
It was in the first elections under Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944 that the planters and merchants, along with their attorneys, faced for the first time the prospect of losing completely the political power which they had enjoyed for nearly three centuries. In the post-1938 period, they found themselves confronted by Bustamante's radicalism, on the one hand, and Norman Manley's socialism on the other. It was in these circumstances and to protect its interest that the owners of capital formed their own political party in March 1942.
This party, the Jamaica Democratic Party (JDP), led by T.H. Sharpe, and including Robert Fletcher, Abe Issa, D.G. McMillan, Douglas Judah and Gerald Mair, did not win a single seat in the 1944 elections and all its candidates lost their deposits.
For the elections of 1949, the owners of capital made common cause with the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) to turn back the socialist challenge of the PNP. By the time the 1955 elections came, the PNP had purged its own left wing and was advocating an economic programme which attracted the support of the more progressive owners of capital. The more conservative landowners, however, chose to follow sugar baron, Robert Kirkwood, in an attempt to again organise their own party in 1953.
Kirkwood and the big landowners who launched the Farmers' Party failed to win over the 250,000 small farmers in the Jamaica Agricultural Society to their cause, and were soundly defeated.
Norman Manley and the PNP administration between 1955-1962 went on to preside over a period of unprecedented growth and modernisation of the Jamaican economy. However, in the elections of 1962, on the eve of Jamaica's political independence, powerful economic forces felt their interests threatened by the prospect of a Marxist, Vernon Arnett, presiding over the Ministry of Finance in independent Jamaica. Some moved their assets out of the country; others provided enough financial support, particularly in the corporate area, for Edward Seaga and Clem Tavares to organise the defeat of the PNP.
The JLP administration between 1962-1972 achieved commendable economic growth, but in the context of such racial protests and social tension that corporate Jamaica voted out the JLP to make way for Michael Manley. By 1976, they withdrew their support from Manley, but could not prevent an overwhelming victory for the PNP and demo-cratic socialism.
It was in the elections of 1980 that the 'Cold War' was fought out in Jamaican politics the perceived threat to capital led corporate Jamaica to unite commerce and manufacturing into the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), which enticed the electorate with its slogan 'Keeping Jamaica fed not fed-up'.
In a campaign, which de-generated into a virtual civil war, some 800 people died as capital reasserted its political power against the determined resistance of radical socialism.
Predictably, the economy recorded its worst performance in independent Jamaica. It was in these elections that corporate Jamaica matured politically. As a result of the political lessons learnt in 1980, capital no longer supported a political party, but in a far more astute manner, identified candidates across the political spectrum whose interests and theirs coincided.
By 1989, the global triumph of capitalism removed completely the threat of socialism. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall that year and the dissolution of
the Supreme Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, signalled the collapse of world communism. Private capital in Jamaica, after experiencing periods of reversals as well as sustained hostility, had finally come into its own, and since then, the political power of corporate Jamaica has not been in doubt. Today is the unseen second 'electorate' in Jamaican politics.
Change, Concessions
and Pragmatism
Among the contenders in the PNP, it is Peter Phillips who has so far shown the deepest understanding of what is required to move the country forward, as well as the capacity to lead this process of transformation. In today's world, our options
are few, and the experiences of successful economies are well worth examining.
Of all former slave societies in the Caribbean, Barbados enjoys the highest standard of living. Don Robotham, in a very enlightening study, locates the Barbadian success within its capacity for racial compromise, and the pragmatic racial contract which has emerged. This is how he describes it: "Control of the state and politics is overwhelmingly in the hands of the black majority, but white Barbadians retain control of the economy of a nation that is about 95 per cent black. This white economy is then heavily taxed by the black state to finance ... what is probably one of the uniformly highest qualities of life for a black population anywhere in the world."
The Option for Jamaica
It is commonly felt that Jamaicans are far too assertive, combative and enterprising to submit to the racial contract practised in Barbados. In the absence of such a contract, our only chance of combining economic growth and social stability is by broadening the ownership of the economy.
This means the emergence of successful black entrepreneurship. Let me add that this success cannot be created by the patronage of a black administration. It has to be achieved within the rule of law and on a level playing field.
It is my view that all Jamaica would benefit from the emergence of a more multiracial entrepreneurial class, since this would help to provide the basis for the social cohesion we so badly need. It would certainly provide hope for the broadest masses of our people and give them role models worthy of emulation. The planned expansion of the Jamaican economy with opportunities for an increasingly multiracial entrepreneurial class is the only concrete response to the criminal violence and anti-social behaviour which stands in the way of development and prosperity.
Success means taking into account not only partisan political objectives, but also the conditions under which capital feels confident enough to expand investment and participate in social reconstruction.
The fate of the entire country is in the hands of the PNP delegates, who owe it to their party and to generations yet unborn to elect the leader most capable of uniting the party and the state to achieve this objective.
Arnold Bertram, an historian and former parliamentarian, is currently chairman of Research and Project Development Ltd. Comments may be sent to: redev@cwjamaica.com.
