Jamaica – Fireworks sparked throughout Saturday evening’s #JaDebates2025 as JLP consultant Matthew Samuda turned up the warmth on the Opposition Individuals’s Nationwide Get together (PNP), demanding solutions on whether or not they would increase taxes if elected.
Samuda, talking in the course of the heated debate on social points, reminded Jamaicans of the high-tax period underneath the final PNP administration. He challenged the PNP workforce to come back clear on their fiscal agenda, suggesting {that a} return to authorities may imply extra monetary strain for struggling Jamaicans.
However Damion Crawford, representing the PNP, pushed again arduous. He defended his get together’s observe report, saying the PNP needed to take over a broken financial system in 2012 and made the arduous calls to place the nation again on strong footing.
Crawford was agency: “There may be completely no want… to have interaction in additional taxation,” he acknowledged, making it clear that the PNP’s focus can be on development, not squeezing the individuals.
The tax debate was one of the vital tense moments of the evening, highlighting a pointy divide between the events on financial technique and who actually has the individuals’s greatest curiosity at coronary heart.
With elections across the nook, voters are watching intently — and each side are feeling the strain to show they will ship with out punishing pockets.