EDITORIAL: How Mr Golding can rescue his premiership

By now it should be clear to Bruce Golding that his egregious misbehaviour in the Christopher Coke-Manatt affair notwithstanding, he has survived to complete his term as prime minister of Jamaica. Unless, that is, he commits another intolerable blunder or deliberately walks away from the job.

First, Jamaicans have concluded that after merely three years in Opposition, having served nearly two decades in government, the People's National Party (PNP) is not yet worthy of a recall. Moreover, there is a national anxiety over a too-early political campaign, with its potential for social instability, and deepening the country's economic crisis.

At the same time, Mr Golding's colleagues in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) concluded that there was none among them whom they would trust to lead the party at this time. Hence, the party rejected Mr Golding's resignation offer when he was discovered to have misled the country about what he knew of the Coke-Manatt issue, and when he knew it.

While one can promise Mr Golding foreclosing of the debate of his role in the tawdry bid by the JLP to thwart the United States' effort to extradite an alleged drug lord who was close to the party, he must understand that he still has the job as prime minister. It is time, therefore, that he end the navel-gazing, hard-done by, set-upon peevishness of the recent past and get on with providing Jamaica the quality of leadership he promised Jamaicans when he assumed office, and when he apologised for the Coke-Manatt affair.

campaign trail

In that regard, we repeat for Mr Golding our strategy for rescuing his premiership and building the base of a lasting legacy.

Constitutionally, there are two years before an election must be held. Recently, Mr Golding and his ministers have been signalling that they may be entering the campaign trail. This is a wrong approach. Mr Golding must operate as though he entered office to serve a two- rather than five-year term, with little care whether he is re-elected.

He must then set some clear, deliverable objectives, which must be clearly enunciated to the Jamaican people. We propose four to be at the top of the government's agenda:

the restoration of law and order in the country;

acceleration of the restructuring of the public sector;

continued efforts to stabilise the economy;

the aggressive promotion of policies for economic growth in which the private sector is recognised as the critical engine.

We do not believe that this is an easy agenda to complete, that it can be achieved in two years, or that some of what is to be done will not be painful in the short term. But Mr Golding had promised to be a transformational leadership, and it is that kind of leadership that provides the route to his redemption.

Treading this route, though, will demand that Mr Golding escape the clutches of his party, which, paradoxically, he has greater strength to do, given the JLP's belief that he is, at this time, the only man for the job. He can, therefore, reach for talent outside the JLP and operate with a freedom that, in other circumstances, might not have existed.

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