Regaining trust

Published in the Jamaica Gleaner: Wednesday | August 22, 2007

First, a disclaimer. Many of you have followed us over the last week as we are engrossed in the exercise of looking at the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) and the People's National Party's (PNP) manifesto, weighing them fairly in the balance to find out where these documents are substantial and where they are wanting.

The purpose of the exercise has not been to wave either a green or an orange flag, but rather to lay out before voters, in an accessible manner, what the costs and likely benefits of their policy proposals are. In other words, what kind of Jamaica can we reasonably expect to be built from the blueprint of these two manifestos?

Every action, of course, has a trade-off, and candidates for public office have not traditionally been forthcoming with prospective voters about what those trade-offs are likely to be.

The budgetary cost is one such, and last week Sunday, we began running the 'thermometer' included in Sunday's article, which adds up the costs of pledges made in the party manifestos so far.

Now, one would never want to judge a party platform on the basis of its cost alone. Public spending can, when done well, yield great returns, and penny-pinching a public sector out of existence is a real danger.

Still, using what we consider a very optimistic projection for growth - starting at three per cent next year and rising gradually to five per cent by the fifth year - a sustained rate which one should note no Jamaican government has actually maintained since the 1960s - we estimated what future revenue is likely to be.