Once the initial shock from the new tax package with increased General Consumption Tax (GCT) of 17.5% announcement wore off and the implications of what it will really meant to every Jamaican (especially the poor) sank in, I was very upset. All weekend ‘mi a stew’ because I felt so helpless. But when I listened to the news yesterday and saw the Gleaner this morning I felt even more ‘bex’ (that is long, long pass vex).

Here is what upsets me the most, the Prime Minister, Mr. Golding is now saying that he will reconsider the tax package announced last week. People, help me to understand, you mean to tell me that the government could be so irresponsible (especially at this time, a week before Christmas) to deliver such an unbearable tax package to the nation before they were certain that there was no other way out? If they had ‘climbed every mountain and forded every sea’, if they had delivered a carefully thought out package then there would be nothing to reconsider. Jamaica is full of bright people, if the government did not have the answers why didn’t they ask for help. One gets the impression that the first thing that comes to the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister, Audley Shaw’s head they just do it. Or is it that the IMF people gave them instructions which they just followed?

‘Dawg news paper’ (rumor) has it that Mr. Golding didn’t give us all of the bad news yet. In fact Mr. Golding himself had said previously that public sector workers will have to be laid off. And if that is not bad enough, there will be no increase in salary for the next two or three years while every thing is going up in price. And you know that the private companies take their cue from the public sector so they are going to lay off people too. (It is happening right now). Now if that is not a formula for disaster, then what is? And remember the money that is presently being borrowed is only to pay back loan, no development for the country is in that. So what happens after the money from the IMF runs out? We still haven’t made plans to build anything, develop any industries, start anything or train anybody, so where does the ‘continue’ money come from.

As I hear nuff people saying, Mr. Golding makes the Grinch who stole Christmas look like a saint. As to all the store owners, they can’t be very happy right now, for no body was in the shops this weekend, (the weekend before Christmas) everybody has started to pinch their few dollars already. I don’t know about you all, but I am ready to protest. We don’t have to ‘gwan’ bad, but it is time we take a stand. This is our country, Jamaica land we love, not JLP country or PNP country, its time for the Jamaican’s People Power to speak.

Nuff Love