Portia’s approach called confrontational
Prime Minister Bruce Golding has hit back at his predecessor, Portia Simpson Miller, for putting his eight-day-old government on notice this past weekend when she warned of “sleepless nights and nightmares” for his administration.
Mr. Golding, speaking at Monday’s swearing-in ceremony for 11 ministers of state and two parliamentary secretaries at King’s House, countered with his own interpretation of the “sleepless nights and nightmares” that have befallen his fledgling government.
“We expect to have sleepless nights, because I expect that you are going to be working night and day to deal with the problems that confront this country and, therefore, it is going to rob you of some of the sleep that you would normally get at nights,” the Prime Minister told his junior ministers after they were sworn in.
“We have been told that we are going to be visited by a nightmare, we already are wrestling with that nightmare.” Mr. Golding added to thunderous applause from the audience attending the ceremony.
“We come to government inheriting a debt of almost $1 trillion; that is an enormous nightmare.”
The Prime Minister lambasted the previous administration for failing to effectively tackle the high murder rate in Jamaica.
“We have a crime rate in which the murder total this year, if it continues on the same trajectory, is likely to be in excess of 1,300 we have a nightmare in crime,” Mr. Golding said.
The Prime Minister assured his ministers that there was no need to be afraid of any other “sleepless nights or any other nightmare – those we have the capacity to respond to”.
At the PNP’s first annual conference in opposition, held Sunday at the National Arena in Kingston, Mrs. Simpson Miller said she would be watching the government like a hawk, and signalled that the new administration would be under the party’s searchlight.
“I am going to let them have sleepless nights. We are going to be their worst nightmare,” she told a cheering crowd of delegates and supporters at the party’s 69th conference on Sunday.
There have been conflicting views on the tone and content of the former Prime Minister’s presentation at the PNP conference, with some analysts chiding Mrs. Simpson Miller for what they describe as her “confrontational” approach, while others felt that her remarks were appropriate.
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