At the same time, Trevor Munroe, who heads the anti-corruption organisation National Integrity Action Forum, called for a rebuilding of the civil society coalition, whose mobilisation forced the Government to extradite gangster Christopher Coke to the United States, to add muscles to the calls for accelerated economic and political reform (see story on Page A2). Both men spoke Friday at a forum organised by The Gleaner on the state of the Jamaican economy. The consensus: it is in deep crisis, in the government’s debt of over one thousand, six hundred million ($1.6 trillion) dollars, or around 130 per cent of the value of all the goods and services produced in Jamaica. Paying the debt takes up nearly all the money Government collects in taxes or in grants from other countries, leaving little to do other business.
This, analysts say, leaves the administration with little choice but to introduce austerity measures, including cutting public-sector jobs, asking all government workers to contribute to their pensions and collecting more taxes, particularly by capturing people who now escape the tax net.
Robotham, a former University of the West Indies sociology professor who now teaches at City University in New York, conceded that, as it has been in Europe, where governments have collapsed in the face of such actions, reform will be challenging for either the governing Jamaica Labour Party or the People’s National Party (PNP), with core support of between 30 per cent and 40 per cent – to do tough things.
Said he: “If we are talking about a place like Jamaica, in which the political parties already have a low level of legitimacy, (and there is) enormous disillusionment with these parties … there is a real danger that the implementation of austerity measures in a population that is lacking in understanding of these measures, and has no real commitment to these measures, that any party which implements them, will immediately face a tremendous loss of public support.”
It is the fear of a bolting by supporters, Robotham felt, “why the parties are so reticent in having this thing on the table” as the campaign for a general election that Prime Minister Andrew Holness is expected to announce this week to take place before yearend.
