We would hope that by now Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has reflected on her speech at Wednesday's handover of homes to residents of her South West St. Andrew constituency under the administration's Inner-City Housing Project.

If she has not, wise and seasoned advisers, we expect, will have told the PM of the folly of her remarks and how they evoked memories of Finance Minister Dr. Omar Davies' 2003 "run wid it" speech, in which he conceded his budget-busting spending of the year before, giving his party the advantage in the pending general election.

Anyone who has been through Mrs. Simpson Miller's constituency, which she has represented for three decades, will know that it has, in heavy doses, all the symptoms of advanced urban blight. Many of the homes and other buildings are gritty and rundown. Unemployment is high, as is crime. There is in many areas a deep sense of hopelessness. At least this was so, until Mrs. Simpson Miller won the presidency of the ruling People's National Party (PNP) towards the end of February and assumed the prime ministership a month later.

Over the years, but more recently, especially during her campaign for the presidency of the PNP, Mrs. Simpson Miller's critics sought to use the state of her constituency as an index of her skills at leadership. She had not done nearly enough, no matter the excuse, they asserted.

It is understandable that she is deeply sensitive to such accusations. But being discomfited by these claims, false or otherwise, is one thing. It is quite another thing how someone who sits in the Prime Minister's chair responds.

In this case, the PM belaboured the point that some critic, on some radio programme in Miami, said that residents of her constituency had to use pit latrines and plastic shopping bags (scandal bags in Jamaica's parlance) because they did not have proper toilets. She denied this, and went on to claim that such a statement had "serious implications for the country."

Two things should be obvious to the Prime Minister. The first is that Jamaica is a Third-World country with a deficit of proper toilets. In some urban communities, if not South West St. Andrew, people do use pit latrines and scandal bags. Fact is fact.

The second issue is Mrs. Simpson Miller's seeming discomfort and anger that this matter should be publicly raised, especially outside Jamaica. The shame is not in this developmental deficit, but if we did nothing about it. It is precisely because of deficits such as these that there are programmes like the United Nations Millennium Goals. It is when we sweep problems under the carpet that nothing happens.

But fixing problems must be serious and programmatic. Which is why we are concerned about her remarking that "I have now gotten the chance and I'm going to do whatever I can do for South West St. Andrew."

It concerns us at two levels. The remark has an Omaresque ring of 2003 suggesting that she may be willing to chuck fiscal responsibility through the window for personal redemption. Our second concern is the seeming suggestion that it is only the power of the prime ministership that will cause Mrs. Simpson Miller to achieve anything in her constituency. That, we believe, is not what the PM would wish to imply.

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