‘It’s a jacket if you say you’re the father of fiscal discipline’

Opposition Spokesman on Finance and the Public Service, Julian Robinson, drew laughter and much desk banging when he told the House of Representatives on Thursday that if Prime Minister Andrew Holness and his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government claim paternity for fixing the Jamaican economy, they would be claiming a “jacket”.

“If they try, they would be getting a jacket,” Robinson remarked during his contribution to the 2025-2026 Budget Debate.

A jacket is a term used colloquially by Jamaicans in reference to a woman who gives a man a child she knew he did not father.

After accusing the JLP of constantly giving the impression that it started the fiscal discipline that Jamaica now enjoys, Robinson reminded that a previous JLP Government abandoned an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme. He said it took the Portia Simpson Miller Administration of 2012-2016, with Dr Peter Phillips as Finance Minister, to right the ship that set Jamaica on the path which the JLP has inherited.

“He (Holness) can’t now turn up pretending to be the ‘baby father’ for fiscal discipline because DNA results would say a nun fi him pickney,” Robinson said.

“They (the JLP) would also rather we forget that it was the PNP administration from 2012-2016 that saved the economy and restored domestic and international confidence in our credibility as a nation,” Robinson added.

He argued that the JLP would have the Jamaican people believe that they “singlehandedly fixed the economy, as if history started in 2016 (when the JLP returned to Government)”.

The JLP has consistently berated the PNP over its 18-and-a-half year period in Government from 1989-2007, when the country experienced little to no growth. But, on Thursday, Robinson shot back, outlining that the JLP’s nine years in office and 14 of 18 years since 2007, have been similarly characterised by low growth. He accused Finance Minister Fayval Williams of being “selective with the history lesson”.