Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness is countering a statement made by Opposition Leader Mark Golding, asserting that prosperity is a journey, not a pleasure, while arguing that Jamaica is experiencing it.
Golding, while speaking to People’s National Party (PNP) supporters in St Catherine North Eastern on Tuesday night, said the Government has failed to deliver prosperity for Jamaicans, despite inheriting the legislative framework created by the party in 2012 to stabilise the economy.
Responding swiftly at a contract-signing and groundbreaking ceremony for the Wakefield Mews Palms Housing Development yesterday, Holness, though not referencing Golding, said he saw the statement and considered seriously whether his Government has delivered prosperity.
Reciting Jeremiah 29:11, Holness said there are some people who will say that there is no prosperity and that it is not going to be delivered.
He said some people confuse prosperity with pleasure and short-term happiness.
“Prosperity is not a moment. Prosperity is a journey. It is constant progress of impactful and positive transformation of the lives of the people,” said Holness. “It is a journey. There are moments on the journey where you will gain some pleasure, but you will also encounter some distress, some hurt, some unhappiness; but it is in the conquest of these things that you develop the mindset of being successful and prosperous.”
Golding told supporters that the then Portia Simpson Miller-led government introduced the fiscal responsibility framework in its current form to ensure that the Government wouldn’t spend more than it should, “and we brought down the debt and got it under control”.
He said the Holness-led government inherited the good work of the previous PNP administration.
“So, all dem a talk, we know that we are the ones who sowed the seed that they have reaped. And now the people of Jamaica say, ‘Alright, we achieved those things, but where are we now? Why is life so hard? Why is it so difficult? Everything is so expensive. We need a break. We need a change. We need hope,’” he said at the party meeting, promising that the next PNP government will offer that hope.
However, Holness said it is his administration that has placed the country on a journey of prosperity. He said before 2015, the mantra and the theme of the country was about poverty.
“It was all about poverty,” Holness claimed, suggesting that debates about poverty are in the distant past.
He said the last that has been heard about poverty is that absolute poverty has been cut in half, moving from 16 per cent of the population being below the poverty line to eight.
Further, he pointed to the unemployment rate, which, he said, was 13 per cent but has since dropped significantly to its lowest, at 3.3 per cent. He said, as a probability, there is a 97 per cent chance of being employed in Jamaica.
“Of course, we’re always going to argue about wages and the level of the wage and so forth, but we are in a better position today than we were a decade ago,” he said, pointing to the beneficiaries of the social housing units to be constructed.
He said there are 40,000 National Housing Trust units in train and major crimes are down, arguing that the people whose lives have been saved are infinitely better off.
He said Jamaicans will have to change their perspective, having, for so long, been struggling and having a default position of “nothing naah gwaan”. The prime minister said things are changing before their very eyes.
“If your perspective is that the glass is half-empty, where are you looking? You’re looking at the bottom. But if your perspective is that it is half-full, where are you looking? You’re looking upwards, and that tells me so much about your attitude. If it’s one thing we know about life is that where you’re headed is determined by your attitude,” said Holness.
“So, I say to all Jamaicans, including the people I’m speaking to here, it doesn’t hurt to take a positive view on life. Attract positive energy; give positive energy. Find the positives in everything and build up on the positives, and that is how you’re going to achieve prosperity,” he said.
