The debate over which of Jamaica's two main political parties deserves credit for the country's current fiscal discipline intensified on Thursday, as Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness addressed the 2025/26 Budget Debate at Gordon House.
Holness clapped back at the People’s National Party (PNP) whose spokesman on finance, Julian Robinson declared fiscal discipline to be a “PNP baby” when he made his contribution to the Budget Debate on March 13. He said that if Holness claimed otherwise he would be claiming a “jacket”.
Opposition Leader Mark Golding also asserted that the PNP is the father of fiscal discipline, having done the heavy lifting to get Jamaica back on track during the 2012-2016 administration of Portia Simpson Miller with Dr Peter Phillips as finance minister.
However, Holness, who leads the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) argued that the process to transform the Jamaican economy started during the 2007-2011 term of the JLP’s Bruce Golding. The PNP has argued that it was during that administration that Jamaica abandoned an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, throwing the economy into chaos and resulting in the PNP having to implement an IMF programme with strict guidelines.
On Thursday, Holnes said “True to their bipolar nature, the PNP wants to claim paternity after causing the mother - the people - so much hardship. In the 2023 budget, the Leader of the Opposition complained that the government was moving too fast to reduce debt, he advocated that we abandon the fiscally responsible path, use J$40 billion (in other words, party with the rent money) from debt repayment to spend on temporary relief. In this Budget, when he sees the amazing benefit of reducing the debt to 68 per cent (of GDP), he is now claiming that the reduction in the debt is due to the PNP’s faithfulness to fiscal prudence”.
“This reminds me of the classic tale of what we call in Jamaica the “wutliss” father who causes the mother so much pain, and then abandons the child, but when the child grows up to be successful, out of the blue they turn up to claim paternity and associate with the success. The Leader of the Opposition is a man of convenience, flip flopping between prudence and popularity when it suits him. One minute he disowns the child of fiscal discipline and then the next he claims the child of fiscal discipline. The mother remembers the pain of Finsac and the high interest rate policy, the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, and she knows that she cannot trust this “wutliss” man, so she did the DNA test, and the results are in, when it comes to 15 year old Fiscal Discipline, PNP you are NOT the father,” said Holness.
“Yes, your name was called, but it is another Golding that is the father,” he added.
