Ignoring the mix of opposition jeers and biting salvos over provisions in the government’s 2010 national budget, Manning has ignored the hyperbole of, for example, Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday, that the budget reflects the extent to which the country had fallen from ‘riches to rags”.

For Manning, his message of ‘comfort’ to the nation is “fear not” Even, that is, as economists, politicians, business people and social commentators continue to express their varying concerns over the evident tightening economic squeeze that has the government now facing an TT$8 billion (US$1.2 Billion) revenue shortfall in the new budget.

It is across in Barbados and Jamaica, however, where two first-term governments are under increasing political pressures over arrangements to secure emergency assistance from the IMF—the international financial institution that holds rather unpleasant memories in past years for a number of CARICOM states.

In Jamaica, the 25-monthold government of first-time Prime Minister Bruce Golding is seeking to borrow US$1.2 Billion from the IMF under its special drawing rights facility.

It is aware that the conditionalities being negotiated could result in some unpleasant medicine for a country already confronted with sky-rocketing criminality, unemployment and rising cost of living.

In Barbados, the 21-month-old administration of first-time Prime Minister David Thompson is seeking to obtain a US$40 million from IMF reserves as complaints mount over rising cost of living, fears of further job losses, currently almost ten percent of the labour force, and amid official warnings of coming cuts in public spending.

Dancing with IMF
Both the parliamentary opposition Barbados Labour Party (BL:P), headed by former Deputy Prime Minister Mia Mottley, and its Jamaican counterpart, People’s National Party of former Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller, have been calling for “transparency” in negotiations with the IMF.

They would, of course, be aware that governments are, generally, reluctant to share details of its negotiating strategies with the IMF.

Yet, Simpson-Miller in Kingston and Mottley in Bridgetown have been stirring the political pot with a view to getting the respective Barbados and Jamaica administration to be “less secretive” and to “come clean” on major aspects of the initiatives that would involve IMF management in these national economies.

Cartoon caricatures of political leaders, editorials, critical commentaries often accompany news coverage with the governments in Kingston and Bridgetown, very much on the offensive against their opponents’ challenges and biting criticisms on reported arrangements to involve the IMF.

This past weekend, PNP leader, Simpson-Miller, was jeering Prime Minister Golding at her party’s 71st annual conference, that he had failed in his election promises to carry out fiscal and economic reforms because, as the claimed “driver”, he simply cannot drive …”The driva (Golding) buy him licence”, she teasingly rolled out .

In Barbados, Opposition Leader Mottley was declaring that while Prime Minister Thompson continued to ignore calls for information and clarification, it was now “clear that the Barbados economy is on a knife’s edge…If we slip, we slide”.

Neither Prime Minister Golding nor Prime Minister Thompson showed outward signs of panic amid the troubling economic waters, though they were perhaps in no position either to offer Prime Minister Manning’s words of ‘comfort’—“fear not.”
(Reprinted from yesterday’s Trinidad Express).