It is usual at this time of the year for people to lay out their wish list and declare their resolutions for the New Year. Our wish for Jamaica is that it will be a safer, prosperous and more caring country, and that we will all resolve to work towards those ends; all of which, we concede, sounds glib and cliché.

But ideals and ideas are merely starting points for possibilities. What is often critical to their transformation into reality is leadership, which in the context of today's Jamaica has to be of extraordinary quality. And while such leadership will perhaps reside in no single individual and is demanded of no single quarter, the greater responsibility for its delivery must rest with the person who controls the most critical levers of power and authority.

In that regard, we place the onus on Prime Minister Bruce Golding to place himself firmly, as he once put it, as the man on the bridge, to lead this hoped-for transformation of Jamaica. In other words, we are calling on the Prime Minister to live up to the expectations he painted over a dozen years, the promise he made in his campaign for the job, and the vision he held out when he the took the oath of office.

Clearly, many Jamaicans have been largely disappointed with some of Mr. Golding's actions in the three months he has been in office. He has failed, so far, to provide the embracing and inclusive leadership that he led many people to expect.

For example, for a man who has long talked about the need for moral leadership and complained about the "awesome power" in the hands of the Prime Minister and the need to contain it, we have been confounded by Mr. Golding's behaviour in the Vasciannie affair.

Of course, Mr. Golding and his backers can argue, with reason, that he is being held to higher standards than his predecessors. But it is he who set the bar for himself. Many Jamaicans liked it. Which is why we hope that the New Year provides Mr. Golding an opportunity for a new beginning. He must demonstrate the capacity to reach out and be inclusive, a position on which many of us are agreed.

But Mr. Golding cannot do it all alone. As the Jamaican saying goes, one hand can't clap. It is not enough, therefore, for the People's National Party and its leader Portia Simpson Miller to lay back and hope that Mr. Golding and his government are overwhelmed by Jamaica's enormous problems and gloat at failures.

We expect the Opposition to offer a serious critique an government policies, but at the same time to help identify areas of convergence that can be placed beyond partisan divisiveness.

It is important, therefore, for Mrs. Simpson Miller to end the childish tantrum over perceived insults and end her boycott of bi-partisan talks. Her supporters who mean her well ought to point out the puerility of this kind of behaviour.

The country cannot move forward with a continuation of the unnecessary quarrels, gamesmanship and chicanery politics that have characterised our public life of recent decades. We expect better behaviour from our leaders, even as we insist that citizens must themselves demonstrate a sense of self-respect that will address issues on points of principle rather than personality and partisanship.