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Bruce's Budget Battle

The prime minister delivered an intellectually robust, piercingly logical and commanding Budget presentation last Tuesday, but you would never know from the commentary about it. The Government's widening credibility deficit over the Dudus extradition/Manatt, Phelps and Phillips issue has added to our own peculiar challenge of assessing things outside a partisan context.

The Budget in macroeconomic context

The fiscal Budget is a statement of affairs for the most important entity in Jamaica, that of the Government of Jamaica. It is expected to convey a clear picture of where the country is coming from, where it is at, where it is going to, and perhaps most important, how it is going to get there.

Searching for consensus

This year's Budget Debate, conducted between two middle-of-the-road, managerialist political parties forming Government and Opposition by a meagre margin of seats, was more respectful, collaborative and data-driven than many past.

High-risk governance

A number of governance problems are evident in making Jamaica's latest Budget. Six days after the minister of finance presented the Budget for 2010-2011, a sympathetic newspaper said there was doubt Jamaica would pass its first quarterly International Monetary Fund (IMF) test, which this Budget was primarily geared towards.

Not changing course ... for now

Waking up every morning to sensational news headlines in the print and electronic media in Jamaica is terribly depressing, to say the least. 'Bad' news is the order of the day and one doesn't seem to get any breathing space anymore. The daily diet of local sensational news stories has, in my mind, intensified the sense of gloom and doom that has pervaded the minds of too many Jamaicans.

A fi we own disgrace

In a desperate attempt to keep Jamaica's first politically appointed president in power, his Government has fired another weapon of mass distraction (WMD). Its use of Harold Brady as a WMD having failed to find any intelligent target, the latest salvo comes in the shape of a lawsuit filed by a private lawyer (Greg Christie, where are you?) on behalf of the attorney general of Jamaica as claimant.

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