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Published: Sunday | September 18, 2005

The comrades heaped sugary praises on P.J. Patterson during last Sunday's PNP conference, and as expected Labourites poured out vitriol in response. But just how good or bad a leader has our longest serving Prime Minister been?

Obviously not all the positive or negative achievements of his administration can be solely attributed to him. But in the end the buck stops at the top. Leaders always take the credit and so must also get the blame for anything that happens under their watch.

In my view after 13 years at the helm Mr. Patterson has left significant legacies in five major areas.

Economic Liberalisation

Electoral and Media Reform

Corruption

Crime

Race Relations

After weighing all the pros and cons I give a passing grade in three out of five areas, which translates to six out of ten.

ECONOMIC LIBERATION

Reluctant capitalist though he sometimes seems to be, Mr. Patterson has been more accepting of free trade doctrines than any Prime Minister since Hugh Shearer. He may not have given market forces unbridled freedom, but he certainly has allowed them far freer rein than the socialist Michael Manley or the statist Edward Seaga. For his administration lowered taxes, cut duties, facilitated the free flow of foreign exchange and allowed competition in the telecommunications industry.

All this has transformed life for the average Jamaican, as the lines at remittance agencies, the cell phone on everyone's ear and the streets full of cars all testify. And the vast majority of people in this country would say for the better. Any party that ran on a platform of 'Let's go back to the controlled economies of the 1970s and 1980s" would not get one percent of the vote. As to the question of whether we can afford all this, the country's debt to GDP ratio is roughly the same now as it was in 1989. The sad fact is that since 1972 we have had in essence nothing but borrow and spend
governments. Alas Bustamante seems to have been our only leader who could understand a bottom line.

As Barbara Gloudon remarked to me recently, our political parties tend to behave like divorced parents competing for their children's affection by seeing who can buy more gifts. The result is a 'wutless pickney' of a country inculcated with a sense of entitlement to live how it wants to live no matter what it can afford.

Will Jamaica ever get competing party leaders who will both campaign on the understanding that they will only promise the people what the country's purse can afford? I was hoping Bruce Golding would prove to be one such. But his public refusal to even countenance the idea of gas tax increases even though oil prices are at record levels is as brazenly populist as anything Mr. Patterson ­ and for that matter Mr. Manley and Mr. Seaga ­ ever said. Sometimes I fear Jamaica will prove the Scottish historian Alexander Tyler right ­ "A democracy
cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury."

ELECTORAL AND MEDIA REFORM

Vibrant democracies have a vibrant press. Jamaica today has both the healthiest electoral system and freest and most varied media landscape it has ever known. And no person is more responsible for this situation than Mr. Patterson. By doing away with the tightly controlled licensing situation of years gone by he completely transformed the Jamaican media and right now pound for pound there is none better anywhere. Personally I would match our radio news shows against any on the planet.

Furthermore, by allowing not only access to overseas cable companies but vigorous competition among operators he gave Jamaicans the opportunity to be as well informed as any citizenry on earth. They may not have become so, but it's hardly PJ's fault most Jamaicans prefer Jerry Springer to the BBC World Service.

Many commentators have praised Mr. Patterson's non-confrontational approach to governance, and justifiably so. But he not only talked the talk in this area but walked the walk by making systematic changes along these lines, most notably by creating a totally independent Electoral Office. Having men with the non-partisan integrity of Danville

Walker as head of the EOJ and Herro Blair as ombudsman has immeasurably increased my confidence in the Jamaican political system. When Mr. Walker threatened to cancel the last elections if both parties didn't behave and Bishop Blair banned ads from either side, not a politician dared opened his mouth. And if that is not a healthy democracy then I don't know what is.

CRIME

In 1989 Jamaica had 429 murders. At the end of this year the body count will be more than four times as high and Jamaica will probably have the world's highest murder rate. His defenders site all sorts of reasons why Mr. Patterson is not to be blamed ­ drugs, a breakdown in family structure, cheap guns. And they are to some extent correct. But Jamaica's crime explosion could have been considerably dampened if tough decisions had been taken 10 years ago when it became clear we had a serious problem.

Only now are we abolishing preliminary hearings and getting strong finger printing laws and up-to-date finger printing and ballistic testing machines. We still do not have proper DNA laws and equipment. Nor instituted measures that proved themselves effective in the U.S. like longer mandatory sentences, three strikes laws, and plea bargaining. And despite murders having increased 400 per cent over the past 15 years not a single new prison has been built. No, there can be no excuse here. Mr. Patterson's regime has simply been criminally negligent on crime.

CORRUPTION

No government is ever completely free of corruption and almost every administration in Jamaican history has thrown up a few scandals. But none to my knowledge have witnessed so many of such magnitude as this present government. The furniture scandal, the shell waiver, Netserv, Operation Pride, the north coast highway overruns, the Sandals Whitehouse overruns, the National Solid Waste Management Agency wastage ­ together these and many more have cost the Jamaican taxpayer tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars.

One is an accident. Two is a coincidence. Three is a pattern. Mr. Patterson stands charged with having overseen the most systematic network of patronage and corruption the country has ever known. There have been a few token resignations, but he has not punished or even publicly reprimanded a single person for abusing the public purse. Instead we have people who have squandered billions of taxpayers' funds telling journalists to 'shut your damn mouth', brushing off questions of accountability with 'I've closed that chapter of my life and moved on' and still ending up on the PNP national platform. I believe the appropriate word is shameless, and applies to everyone who was on that stage.

RACE RELATIONS

Talk to almost anyone and they will tell you that race relations in Jamaica are as good as in any place on earth. One Sri Lankan-born and well-travelled resident recently described them to me as 'amazing really'. But this doesn't mean, as some complacently assert, that 'race doesn't matter here'. Because while it shouldn't, in Jamaica or anywhere else, only the willfully ignorant could consider this a completely colour blind country.

For instance in 1993, before Mr. Patterson succeeded Michael Manley as Prime Minister, there was a lot of talk on upper St. Andrew verandahs that 'Jamaicans will never vote for a black man'. For up till then all Jamaica's elected leaders had been light skinned, with the black Hugh Shearer having become Prime Minister only after Donald Sangster died in office. Mr. Patterson proved such chatter to be idle nonsense. But that such notions could be so widely bandied about showed the attitudes that still persist in certain circles.

Now I've never exchanged more than a polite hello to him on a couple of occasions, but having talked to people of similar backgrounds who grew up in the white ruled colonial era, I'm sure Mr. Patterson has suffered many racial slights in his time. And many in his shoes might have seen his elevation as an opportunity for settling scores not only personally but for those who knew like circumstances. To his credit he has never done so, at least not openly. He certainly has alluded indirectly to the fact that unlike some of his opponents he shares the same ethnic background as the vast maj-ority of Jamaicans ­ and who wouldn't have in his shoes? Plus there is much muttering that the scandals which have plagued his regime were part of a deliberate empowerment programme. But he has been, in my view, very careful on the whole not to make the issue of race on openly divisive one.

economic meltdown

All this might seem sensationalist, but race can be a very explosive issue, especially when hard times hit. Zimbabwe's expulsion of white farmers is very much in the news nowadays, but it's hardly a unique example. For instance, during the last economic meltdown in Indonesia, thousands of Chinese merchants were killed and their wives and daughters raped as an angry populace sought scapegoats for their suffering. Some scoff and say such things could never happen in stable and tolerant Jamaica. But irresponsible leadership can quickly turn seemingly prosperous and settled countries into basket cases. Look at the Ivory Coast, which a few years back was a symbol of African stability, but is now in the throes of civil war.

Perhaps I am giving Mr. Patterson too much credit, because after all he won all his general elections comfortably and so never really needed to play the race card. But I think history will remember him in this and many other regards as a key transitional figure whose non-confrontational and gradualist approach enabled the country to change dramatically without any lasting political or economic upheavals. However, given his failures in the areas of crime and corruption, I do not think he can be considered a truly outstanding leader. Yet, has unfortunate Jamaica known such a thing since the days of Busta and Norman?