First Year in Government: Dismal

On Sunday of this week, The People’s  National Party celebrated the  first anniversary of it’s return to Jamaica House as it was on January 6, 2012 that Portia Simpson Miller was reinstated as Prime  Minister after having spent four years in the opposition following their defeat at the polls in 2007, all in all while the performance of the government in their first year back on the job was not entirely catastrophic there is still not much to celebrate, their performance can best be described as lukewarm and dismal.

   

                                     

This view is being supported by some of Jamaica’s leading analyst such as Kevin Chang and Martin Henry in fact most persons have given the government a failing grade for their first year in office and it’s not hard to see why. Never could anyone possibly imagine that after a whole year the Finance Minister Dr. Peter Philips has still not yet finalised a deal with the International Monetary Fund which has only caused investor and consumer confidence to plummet, a sharp dip in the Net International Reserves while commodity prices seem to increase in a period of austerity where wages remain stagnant. The PNP has repeatedly demonstrated its incompetence by continuing to  blame the previous JLP government  (who are now in opposition) for the breakdown in the negotiations, that argument may very well convince the naive  but well thinking Jamaicans know better than to swallow such hogwash, this government has had an entire year to complete the process yet they still have not done so regardless of that fact that the Prime Minister was recorded as saying that negotiations will be concluded within two weeks of taking office in the 2011 National Debates, of course most of us already knew that the two week deadline was not feasible but it only goes to show how this government has lied to the people of this country time and time again in order to gain popularity instead of speaking the truth from the outset.

                                                                                              

The  government has also received a failing grade as far as the employment rate is concerned, the number of Jamaicans unemployed continues to rise currently standing at 12.7%, and is going up even as I write, I wonder what happen to the promise of the so called JEEP? (which is nothing more than a publicity stunt crash programme) which was supposed to provide employment, I mean what sort of government promises to provide its citizens with “emergency employment” instead of something more stable and long term?, clearly these people do not have the nation's best interest at heart.

 The only people in this country who seem to think that the PNP is doing a good job is the PNP itself, one minister was quick to point out that  the negotiations with the IMF as “almost at an end” a rhetoric we have been hearing for several months now with no concrete results while the National Security Minister Peter Bunting was very quick on New Year’s Day to pat himself on the back by quoting minimal reductions in crime while the murder rate still stood at well over a thousand for the last year alone. Of course as expected the biggest propaganda stunt came from none other than the Prime Minister herself who thought it fit to make a national broadcast on the anniversary of her inauguration to “list the achievement of her administration so far” the speech was filled with self praise and over exaggerated figures while matters  of genuine concern were left untouched, according to a release from her office the broadcast was meant to update the nation on what’s being happening so far and to chart the path forward into the future, far from it’s intention the speech did nothing to inspire hope and confidence but was instead filled with vague promises rather than concrete  plans  it was like she was campaigning all over again quite frankly I was not surprised.                                    

                                              

As we all know self praise is no recommendation yet it seem to be one of the few things that the PNP is good at, I really wonder if Jamaica can take four more years of this inept type of governance from those who are supposed to be public servants, the Government need to wake and realise that the honeymoon has long been over it’s full time that they work to establishing full economic independence and accomplish the plans set out by vision 2030 making Jamaica the place to Live, Work, Raise Families and do business.