Aubyn Hill
CONGRATULATIONS TO Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller who, on Saturday, February 25, was elected by a plurality of 46.7 per cent (1775 votes) of the PNP delegates to the post of president of the People's National Party. Prime Minister P.J. Patterson will demit office in a few weeks and that makes Mrs. Simpson Miller the Prime Minister-designate of the country.
For almost two centuries little children were told in America (mainly white boys for most of that time) that they could become president of the United States. Until the sixties that was legally really not true for little black children - some would argue that women and blacks are still excluded from being considered for the top job in the United States. Up until last Saturday, the job of Prime Minister in Jamaica was one that was held exclusively by men; that was overtly true. More subtly, there was the unstated rule that if one was going to become leader of the People's National Party then he (never she until now) had better originate from the upper St. Andrew Drumblair set. In the campaign which ended in Portia's victory on Saturday, she smashed that subtle, anachronistic and non-democratic concept and in the process created the truism that "in Jamaica, any little boy or girl, from any walk of life, can become Prime Minister of the country". Bravo, Sister P.!
PIONEERS FACE SPECIAL CHALLENGES
My preparation for, and my participation in the investment forum on Jamaica hosted by Prime Minister P.J. Patterson at the Pegasus last Thursday, strengthened my firm belief that Jamaica is poised for serious and sustained economic growth. There are a group of local and foreign investors and business people who are committed to the success of this country and the government's main job will be to act as a facilitator and, just as importantly, make the conscious decision to assist the process rather than be a source of bureaucratic blockage. I am equally convinced that the top political leaders share this commitment, however, they must get the message down to the government officials at the operating levels to ensure that they assist rather than put up road blocks to the process. Prime Minister-designate, Portia, comes into office with a tremendous amount of goodwill that is backed up by empirical popular support which she can marshal to overcome most any bureaucratic or political road blocks that she may find in her pathway.
Portia Simpson Miller and her husband Errald Miller, on their way to church on Sunday at the National Arena, where the Jamaica Baptist Union celebrated its 156th General Assembly. Mrs. Simpson Miller was on Saturday elected president of the People's National Party, the first woman to hold the top post in the party's 68-year history. She will shortly be sworn in as the country's seventh and first female Prime Minister. - RUDOLPH BROWN/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
POLITCAL AGENDA
This column appears in the business section of the newspaper and most of my career has been spent in the business arena. However, I fully recognise that the first and most overriding objective of a political party is to win elections. Prime Minister-designate Portia Simpson Miller, takes over the reins of the People's National Party and (soon) the Prime Minister's office with a substantial amount of political capital to her credit. Her first order of political business must be to establish and maintain the healing process in the party so that, except for the very few who that are so vitriolically opposed to her policies and person, all her party members - including the presidential candidates who opposed her - will be brought back into the fold very quickly.
The Prime Minister-designate's great strength is her closeness and understanding of the common people. It is a funny thing about human beings that when we achieve success, especially a particular item or position we have targeted for many years, we tend to stop doing those things that made us successful in the first place. As she takes on the mantle of Prime Minister, Mrs. Simpson Miller must be careful to stay close to her political base. She must seriously avoid the temptation of forgetting that base even as she works assiduously to broaden her reach to cover the entire political spectrum in order to gain the kind of broad mandate of support that she will need to govern effectively. Naturally, she will also need to form a cabinet very quickly that will be responsive to the ideals and ideas that she has championed and that will make her leadership of the party successful at governing the country. I am sure she is fully aware that the Opposition will give her no political quarter whatsoever. Nor, frankly, should they. Good democratic governance means that those who hold power must constantly be challenged to make them effective, accountable and transparent. She must quickly learn to use the Opposition JLP's criticisms as valuable unpaid consulting advice.
SOCIAL PROGRAMME
Mrs. Simpson Miller's political supporters expect a great deal from her. This will be one of her biggest and earliest challenges. She has promised empowerment and they expect it. The problem is that they expect it now, and some of that empowerment will have to come over time. Her challenge will be to get the time element injected into the "empowerment now" equation. Many mothers expect that she will have an effective methodology to convert delinquent and dodgy fathers to become baby-support compliant. One of the really important messages that she will have to start delivering early is that all of us as Jamaicans must shoulder our duties much more responsibly.
The range of personal responsibilities includes the paying of taxes and good salaries as employers and business people, to the cutting out of that insidious concept of "getting a baby", to the point where she will lead the charge to ensure that fathers (and mothers) act responsibly in parenting children, and that fathers in particular provide child support for those children that they sire. The improvement of our education system will pose an urgent and forceful challenge immediately and she will need to invite much more private involvement, management and financing to meet the challenge. Her social agenda has to include a combination of a fairly rapid empowerment balanced by a clear sense of accountability and responsibility supported by suitable sanctions if necessary.
ECONOMIC PLAN
In most successful countries, the first responsibility of any government is to provide the environment in which growing economic activity will provide more and better jobs for its citizenry. In the economic sphere, the issue of empowerment will also be an urgent agenda item. The new Prime Minister has a huge trump card in her hand that she should use skilfully, early and well. That trump card is the combination of the amount of land the government owns and the getting of titles into ordinary Jamaicans' hands so that they can convert this unemployed asset into income producing assets and businesses. A lot of credit must be given to Dr. Carlton Davis and his team who have worked with the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce to make the transfer of title much easier than it used to be. But there is still a significant amount of backlog that can be pushed through very quickly, because in some cases, especially in the country parts, getting a title still takes far too long.
The new Prime Minister should focus on getting the matter of titles and land valuation decentralised and made more efficient by the employment of experienced retired people, or bright students in their spare time, to get many more Jamaicans empowered through the ownership of land. Some of the government land will have to be kept for strategic and future development, however, there is far too much that is held in an unused or under-utilised fashion at the National Investment Bank of Jamaica (we have started work to identify what can be sold off immediately) and at the Urban Development Corporation of Jamaica - just to name two government institutions that carry a lot of land on their books.
On a related issue, I urge the new Prime Minister to take immediate steps to reduce significantly (or abolish) the huge impediment called the transfer tax and the related stamp duty. To sell a property and buy a smaller one these days will bring the transfer tax, stamp duty and related other fees to almost 30% of the cost. This is ridiculously prohibitive when compared to between 8% and 10% in the USA. If this tax were abolished, given our 16.5% GCT tax on transactions, the government will make a lot more money from the volume and velocity of transactions than the relatively small amount it now makes on the transfer tax and stamp duty. The transfer tax takes too long to be earned because the process is so cumbersome and prone to corruption. Tax collection and tax reform are other economic items on which more focus can be placed. The release of non-strategic government lands into productive income-producing (and taxes creating) ventures, plus the abolition of the transfer tax and related stamp duty will combine to become a fast-start employment-generating machine.
CRIME IMPERATIVE
Above I mentioned that in most well run countries providing the right economic growth environment is the primary responsibility of the government. In Jamaica, today, that primary agenda item has to be the reduction of crime. The Prime Minister-Elect is going to have to show formidable resolve to make this her first priority and ensure that criminals - especially murderers of innocent people including women, children and the elderly - are put behind bars. If, however, they confront the security forces and threaten their lives then the security forces must be empowered completely to protect themselves while keeping within the laws of our country.
All who befriend the Prime Minister-designate must come to understand that they have to be on their best behaviour and she must be unequivocal in letting them know that they are expected to keep the law and stay within the law otherwise she will be obliged to subject them to the full force of the law. The campaign messages of Team Portia cited often the new President of Liberia as a strong role model for the candidate. As the new leader of the government Prime Minister Portia would do well by following the example of this noble Liberian President and make no accommodation whatsoever with those who fly foul of the law. Jamaica must come to be seen as Portia's law abiding country. Her message on crime to all of us, the security forces, her colleagues in the government and the Peoples National Party, her special political supporters and - especially to criminal elements in our country - must be clear and simple. It must be that she is going to lead the drive to take Jamaica back from the small criminal group that would seek to keep us in fear and bondage and away from economic growth and prosperity that each Jamaican needs and seeks.
I wish the new Prime Minister well and hope that she will take time to recognise that the three parts of her person-body, mind and spirit-need sustenance and take the necessary steps to sustain all three. Many of us as her countrymen will seek to help her in that process. But she must remember as well that we will be watching her performance very carefully - we hope with admiration!
Aubyn Hill is the CEO of Corporate Strategies Ltd, a restructuring and financial advisory firm. Respond to: writerhill@gmail.com
