Robert Buddan

Portia Simpson Miller made her second contribution to the budget debate as Prime Minister this past week. Since her first presentation came towards the end of the last fiscal year, this year's budget would actually count as her first full budget. It was, therefore, the first indication of how her administration's policies and her personal philosophy translate into spending plans towards the economy and society.

The Prime Minister won her popularity as a politician on the reputation of being a people person. Now that she is more than just a politician, she has to be identified with policies that mark her as the political leader of the Government and country who sets the trend and the tone for the people to believe in the direction she has taken for the country's development. Merely being a people person is not enough for her new role.

Family and community

The picture that is emerging is of a Prime Minister whose inspiration comes from her religious beliefs. That had been established in her first year. But now a kind of Confucian philosophy is defining her emphasis on family and community. Her thinking is that strong families make strong communities and strong communities make a strong nation.

The family becomes the model for the nation. The nation is the extended family. It is the family that best prepares the individual with the values that make him/her a productive Jamaican. Good parenting is, therefore, also important.

However, in the Jamaican context where slavery destroyed family and community life, the strong family and community cannot be taken for granted. They have to be reconstructed. This is not easy given the traditions of political divisions, and in its more extreme forms, of tribalism, coupled with the consequences of modern antisocial values. The Prime Minister, therefore, sees herself as having a special role in reconstructing family and community in the ongoing quest to builda nation.

That role makes her into something like a mother figure for the nation, practising a nurturing philosophy. The role of her government is to build a caring society that improves the quality of life of members of the Jamaican family. It is a maternal model of politics that seeks to transform society from the patriarchal model so that caring is the dominant paradigm, not male forms of power and competition.

Coming under attack

There are two ways of doing this. The first depends on her personal leadership through which she hopes to make the critical difference. But her Christian and maternal models have already come under attack as the symbolic manipulation of religion for political gain and as 'Jezebel', which combines attacks on religious and feminine sincerity.

Yet to her, these attacks confirm the need to struggle against a system of political divisions and its patriarchal bias against womanhood.

The second way is through her policies. Her budget presentation emphasised caring and nurturing policies in health, education, housing, and jobs, as the means through which families enjoy dignity, opportunity, and empowerment. But in a society for which the National Motto is 'Out of Many, One People', she wants to avoid political, class, and racial distinctions.

She prefers to use terms such as 'marginalised' and 'vulnerable' to suggest that without policies of empowerment, Jamaica cannot be productive. She avoids the position that otherwise, the country will descend into a war between rich and poor. Her solution to the problem of 'two Jamaicas' is not to preach revolution but rather, harmony through love, unity and peace.

To make this philosophy work, Mrs. Simpson Miller feels she has to prove that as a woman she can be a successful leader, either that or Jamaica needs a Prime Minister with her values and philosophy. The fact that she became Prime Minister is to her, important evidence that the country is receptive to her model for change.

This is probably why she regularly reminds her audience that she is Jamaica's first female Prime Minister. It is a personal triumph, as well as a triumph of womanhood.

She, then, has to prove that her policies are right for Jamaica and for the Jamaican people. She has a good start because she identifies strongly with the people and they with her. Her first budget is strong on social investment to build families because she believes in the fundamental goodness of the Jamaican people. She is not cynical about human nature. She has faith in people and confidence that the social investments in them will pay off. She will be anxious to demonstrate the successes that prove her philosophy.

Since so much rests on the family, the Prime Minister is determined to use a strong hand against those forces that destabilise the family. These forces include abusive parents and caregivers, criminals and drug pushers, disservice and disrespect by the bureaucracy, unemployment, sexual predators, and human traffickers. She also objects to the kind of politics that gets in the way of development. She wants parliamentarians on all sides to judge her legislative agenda by how they build stronger families and communities rather than simply to oppose for the sake of opposing.

The Prime Minister has already lined up her social policies and legislation for the immediate term. But there is an economic plan for this social model. The Prime Minister accepts that a growing economy is necessary to support social investments. But the type of economy also matters. Small and medium enterprises are important for a private sector that would give opportunities to greater numbers of people. Agriculture is critical because so many families are farming families. Jobs are important but the quality of jobs is important to one's quality of life.

Balanced development

While her emphasis is on balancing people's lives, Finance Minister Dr. Omar Davies is responsible for balancing the books in such a way that the macro-economic conditions for growth accommodate the social agenda. There is to be synergy between the two. The Prime Minister believes that her first year and her second budget demonstrate that the achievement of one has not done damage to the other and that it is possible to balance economic prudence with social intervention.

We will see more active social governance through agencies and programmes such as National Insurance Scheme, National Health Fund, National Housing Trust (NHT), PATH, and National Youth Service (NYS). Already a major initiative is to exempt children and PATH beneficiaries from fees at public hospitals. School places will increase by more than 13,000. The NYS programme will take in more young people and train them. Pensioners will receive more. The NHT will be more active in providing housing solutions for people generally but sugar workers and inner city residents in particular.

The Prime Minister explained these policies in the context of her philosophy: "We must take care of our most vulnerable family members. We have to help the children, the weak, the elderly and the disabled. This is an obligation that we have from God". PULL QUOTE: [Mrs. Simpson Miller has provided a social and moral philosophy for her government. The philosophy is not entirely new since it has roots in many traditions but it is the first time that it has become the guiding philosophy for our government.] In this way she has also made a clear distinction between her administration and the Opposition.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, Mona, UWI. Email:Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm