Quiet first 100 days in the House for Portia
published: Sunday | July 2, 2006

Edmond Campbell, Senior News Coordinator

PRIME MINISTER Simpson Miller's first 100 days in Parliament went by without much fanfare, with her Budget presentation being the only direct contribution made by her in the House, since taking the reigns of government in March.

After her inauguration as Jamaica's seventh Prime Minister on March 30, 2006, at a ceremony attended by more than 6,000 persons at King's House in St. Andrew, Portia Simpson Miller pledged to advance human rights and individual liberty.

The eradication of corruption and extortion was also high on the Prime Minister's agenda.

Forty days after, Mrs. Simpson Miller followed up on one of her commitments to tackle corruption when she announced in her maiden Budget presentation that the Corruption Prevention Commission would soon become a creature of Parliament.

The Corruption Prevention Commission was established in 2001 to weed out acts of corruption in the public sector. Under the Corruption Prevention Act 2000, public sector workers are required to make annual declarations of assets to the commission.

NEW GOV'T INITIATIVES

On May 9, during her contribution to the Budget Debate, the Prime Minister rolled out a number of new Government initiatives, including a $500 million a year plan to assist thousands of National Housing Trust (NHT) contributors to qualify for loans.

The new NHT initiative and other housing plans accompany early childhood education and job creation as the focus of Government's programmes for the 2006/2007 fiscal year.

"I am determined that more of our people at the bottom of the economic ladder, who are contributors to the trust, should be able to qualify to own a home," she told Parliament during her presentation.

With a $1.7 billion allocation to early childhood education, Mrs. Simpson Miller said this had been the largest amount ever that was set aside for this sector, a 14 per cent increase over last year's allotment.

In her first controversial issue in the House as Prime Minister, Mrs. Simpson Miller responded to Opposition Leader Bruce Golding's threat of 'bangarang' if the Government used money from the National Insurance Fund (NIF) to fund other government initiatives, including loans to the small business sector.

Dismissing the Opposition's caution, a strident Mrs. Simpson Miller said: "I urge him not to continue his threat of confrontation and bangarang. This is not the kind of example the people of Jamaica are expecting from us as leaders of this nation."

Last week, there were no answers to questions posed by Opposition Leader Bruce Golding to the Prime Minister on matters relating to PetroCaribe. The Opposition wanted to know, among other things, the volume and value of products imported from Venezuela under the PetroCaribe agreement since June 2005.

Leader of Government Business, Dr. Peter Phillips, asked the House for more time on behalf of Mrs. Simpson Miller, noting that answers to the queries were being researched and would be ready in two weeks.