IF each working-age adult in Jamaica should clock the same number of hours as the prime minister at his job, this country would be much closer to ‘developed’ status in five years.

By my calculations, the prime minister arrives at Vale Royal pretty early, when most Jamaicans are still sleeping – six in the morning. He reads his emails, I suppose, and scans the daily papers — national and international — among other things. He leaves for Jamaica House and arrives at about 8:00 am. He then carries out his prime ministerial duties, meeting with either the full Cabinet or specific members, depending on priorities.

He has to meet with other stakeholders in the big picture, so he does that either at Jamaica House or he travels to some official venue. There may be days when Parliament is in session and he has to attend. I am told he leaves Jamaica House late, around 9:00 pm, then it’s back to Vale Royal to deal with official correspondence. He leaves there sometimes at close to midnight.

By my calculations, he is on the job from 6:00 am to midnight, a total of 18 hours — a recipe for a physical and mental breakdown. People who come to us and plead with us to vote for them, who implore us to see them as better than the other guy, who offer us ‘care’ packages and spend many millions of dollars of corporate money to advertise their presumed strengths and appealing attributes do so because they want power, political power.

So we elect them because we bought into the hype that they had the better plan to take this country forward. In the JLP’s case, Golding clawed back from a popularity rating for Portia Simpson Miller of 75 per cent in early 2006 to a narrow win in late 2007 — no mean feat. So, if he is on the job for 18 hours each day, it ought to mean that he intends to make a difference; he is actively working behind the scenes in an effort to make that difference; and that he knew that once he won, he would have been faced with many long, miserable, frustrating, disappointing and exhilarating days.

The question is, if he is clocking so many hours, why are we not ‘seeing’ the results of those efforts? Over the last four months I have not met a single Jamaican who is prepared to give Golding’s leadership and the administration he leads a passing grade.

In large measure, Golding is hobbled by the strictures of the global recession and its terrible effect on an economy that for years had been dragging itself along on a pair of borrowed crutches. The prime minister knows this but one senses that, two years later, he has still not recovered from the shock of actually winning the elections and running into the train wreck of global economic slowdown one month later.

It appears that Golding the prime minister had a plan, up until September 2007, but derailed as those plans have been in light of the recession, Golding the man has still not summoned the fortitude to lead Golding the politician into an understanding that while a leader will never be able to please everyone or every sector in this confused polity, the leader has to be a man for all seasons.

We are yet to see Golding act as a man for all seasons, and as doom and gloom engulf many people in this country, there is hardly anyone who believes that such a Golding will be showing up.

Golding weak on retaining ‘Babsy’ Grange

Take the case of the Trelawny Multi-purpose Stadium. The Government sat on its hind legs at a time when our sports prowess was at its peak and the Chinese, who built the complex, would not have needed much prodding to enter into additional sporting relationships with Jamaica.

What did Golding do? At a time when it needed a young, savvy marketing brain who understood the complexities of the global economic network and where athletics fit in, Golding should never have kept Babsy Grange – a nice lady but hopelessly out of her depth in straddling the new motions of the global sporting dollar – in the minister of sports post.

One reader, once a strong supporter of the JLP, wrote: “You are so right about the Government’s selfish decision not to ‘give back’ something to UTech for investing in talent, and giving the whole of Jamaica, including the diaspora, so many reasons to be proud this year. The Government doesn’t do jack for athletes, but UTech did – and this is what they get in return.

“When I heard the minister’s fancy talk on radio, I turned to my co-workers and said, ‘I am taking bets that next year this time, the Trelawny stadium will still be languishing in the wilderness, and taxpayers will still be burdened with the maintenance bill.’

“You want to know how many of them bet against me? Not one. You know why? There’s absolutely no reason to believe that the minister will be any more adept at pulling off her fancy ideas than she is at pulling off her airport welcome parties. But limited is as limited does. The real mystery in all of this is, why does the PM sanction these decisions? Why do we let them all get away with it?”

It is Ego which runs our politics

Most politicians I know drink vodka or Scotch whiskey but their main drug is something called ego. Therefore, whenever plans or big business proposals are suggested to them, their initial reaction is to scoff at them and say, “We have something bigger than that in the pipeline.”

Additionally, tribal politics run high in this country and if one’s cousin is the friend of a man who had a sister whose brother supported the ‘other side’ sometime in the 1970s, the proposal is thrown out. I am not saying that the framers of the UTech proposal for the stadium are even remotely PNP supporters and that the rejection of the proposal was linked to that factor. I do not know nor do I care what party they support.

One other reader said, “I agree with you on this one. Personally, I believe that the stadium could be used as a catalyst to build a new town (New Falmouth) and relocate the current residents of Falmouth there. They should then be given first choice (if properly trained) for job opportunities in Falmouth as it is transformed to a heritage tourism park. New Falmouth economy could be built on the backs of UTech and Falmouth.”

The question for the prime minister is: Are you leading the sports minister or is she leading you? Many people have begun to speculate that maybe the prime minister is held hostage by old, festering political relationships of the past and he is expending too much energy in trying to quietly shroud the smoke where small brush fires within the Cabinet flare up.

At a time when this energy should best be directed to infusing this country with new, workable ideas which have natural linkages to the bigger global picture, the prime minister is still in charge of those who cannot see beyond the primeval 1980s. So, he keeps ‘Babsy’ Grange in place because she is a woman and he cannot afford to upset that reality.

One online commentator wrote, “UTech should just employ the strategy of a certain hotel chain. Buy up the lands next to your competitor and build a new resort. So UTech should just buy up lands adjacent to the Stadium site and start building their new campus like how Jamaican squatters operate. In time the Stadium will become theirs because Government will not be able to maintain it over the long run.”

Why can so many people see viability in the UTech plan while Golding and Grange are locked off from that view? In truth, when we make criticisms of this or any other government, or suggest big, workable projects to them, we do so with the firm knowledge that we know little about the machinery of government, which raises the question: What is the reality that we do not know that would cause the Government to view the UTech proposal as not viable and lead to its rejection?

I believe that it is something called ‘ownership’. The Government wants to own the idea because this is how little men and women with inflated egos operate.

Manna from the US coming?

Another reader wrote, “I am sure there are times when you feel despondent about the state of affairs in Jamaica, but don’t give up. Jamaica has a potentially bright future. Sometime within the next four years Jamaicans will more than likely have a chance to choose to profoundly change their circumstances. Can you consider it possible that Jamaica could become the beneficiary of non-governmental assistance similar to the intent of The Marshall Plan?

“This would involve American multi-billionaires of Libertarian persuasion. The goal is to change the US by enabling a micro example of a properly functioning economic and social state (without unnecessarily changing its innate culture) outside the US that can be observed by the people of the United States, and ultimately copied by individual states in the Union.

“An attempt to prove the viability of the concept may be undertaken next year (funding not yet confirmed) in one of the eastern parishes. This will attempt to determine the chance of success of a full-scale commitment based on the reactions of the residents to the stimuli? Will they cooperate when provided with the means to better their community?”

He then told me what I already knew, “Rich folks do not easily give up their money. When the time is right, you will know more.”

Not one for buying into fairy tales, I replied to him: “It is extremely easy for us here to get real ‘down’ in the soul and believe that no solutions are in sight. Now you come up with something that sounds like ‘Alice in Wonderland’; something which involves outsiders doing for us what we should have done, or should be doing for ourselves. You say that one of the motivating factors is:

‘The goal is to change the US by enabling a micro example of a properly functioning economic and social state (without unnecessarily changing its innate culture) outside the US that can be observed by the people of the United States, and ultimately copied by individual states in the Union.’

“That I can understand, but why Jamaica? Can these super-rich Libertarians envision the bureaucratic humbugs that governmental administrations thrive off? I say this will only get off the ground if a Jamaican politician is allowed to claim that he, or she, was the THREAD who strung it together. It just sounds too good to be true.”

Manna falls from Heaven in the Biblical tales. In 2009, it is not likely to do so.

Did the Church win the horse race?

Where I took the Church to task in last Thursday’s column over its ‘victory’ in curtailing significant economic activity in the first ever Sunday racing from Caymanas Park, ‘All About Power and Control’, one person figuratively grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said in typical evangelist fashion, “When you make a statement like, ‘Although the Catholic, Anglican, Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist denominations have worked wonders in education in Jamaica, it is time that they all recognise that as adults we laud them for it, but would ask that as adults they keep out of policing our adult lives… The church did a good job in educating us as children, but now that we are adults, it is still summoning us to Sunday School. It cannot exist without total control.’ I can hear ‘Priest’ (Bishop Gibson) saying, ‘Mark, come to Jesus NOW or go to hell forever!’ “

He tells me that, like me, he is a KC old boy and imputes that somehow, if I am not clothed in the glory of Jesus, I will be damned forever. Do people really believe this stuff?

I replied thus, “You have excellent hearing which crosses the life/death divide. You ought to share with us just how you managed it.”

He shot back in quick time with, “I know my hearing might be somewhat extraordinary and I am sure you have been chided about your nonexistent relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, but the Word of God speaks loud and clear and ‘Priest’ did testify about his faith in it. And so it is on that premise that I believe if he were here he would say to you, ‘Mark, now is the time and today is the day of salvation. Come, because soon and very soon time will be no more and you will experience eternal damnation. It is a tuff one to swallow, tek it now or feel it lata!'”

Could someone have spent six years in a top high school then university and still subscribe to the belief that their kind and loving God would want to burn people in a pit of fire? It was only because we share the same alma mater why I playfully jabbed back at him, “OK, I will accept this as another ‘sermon’ for the day. When you say, ‘tek it now or feel it lata,’ it sums up exactly what I think of religion. It is nothing more than coercion or, better yet, extortion where a ‘threat’ of hellfire or some other stupidity is employed to fool the weak and gullible. I left that all behind at age 15. Stick with your guru guy, ‘Lord Jesus Christ’, and if it rocks you, dance to it.”

Not to be outdone, he brought in the standard I-am-at-a-better-place-than-you routine, “I will definitely stick with my guru guy for He is my Rock, and I will dance to and with Him all the way to glory. I will also continue to pray for you and the other ‘stone-hearted’ in the hope that unno change sides before the Ref blows off de game and dawg nyam unno suppa. In the interim, keep flashing the pen for we both know it is mightier than the sword.”

Amen, brother!

Another reader, seemingly more enlightened with humanity than religious histrionics, said, “Another very good article in today’s Observer. Just one point about horse racing on Sundays, and the ban on betting at the OTBs, ostensibly put in place under pressure from the churches: those hypocrites who keep silent when innocent children and old people are being murdered but who see sin in placing a bet on a Sunday; who have never raised objection to the casinos that are open all day on Sundays but who now have found a special “horse-racing sin” to exert their pressure about.

“My main reason for writing to you is that I was surprised that you did not mention the ban placed on the radio and television broadcasting of the races! I am not a racing fan, I don’t watch races on TV, but I am a firm believer in freedom of expression and of the press. In my opinion, unless a subject is deemed to be lewd, immoral, subversive or otherwise illegal, the broadcasting of any event should be merely a commercial matter. In other words, the radio and TV stations should be free to make any commercial arrangements with Caymanas Track for the races to be broadcast.

“Under what power does the Government place a ban on the transmission of horse racing on Sundays on both radio and television? I take this matter very seriously, because today it is pressure from the church on horse racing, tomorrow what will it be?”

Unfortunately I did not get the chance to check this out with the Broadcasting Commission. Are we really serious about business in this country when we allow ‘men of the cloth’ to take food from the table of those who could have earned a small income on that Sunday?

Another wrote, “The SDA church never made an official remark for or against Sunday racing. It has a policy of religious liberty and most Adventists (at least this Adventist) would agree with you that the church doesn’t have to comment on the legality or not of Sunday racing.”

Said another, “It appears that the ‘heathens’ turned out in record numbers at Caymanas Park on Sunday. So instead of placing a bet at an off-track and then attending to other family functions on the Lord’s day, they spent the whole day at the park mostly with the family. If that is a victory by the Churches, so be it. Seems to me the masses have spoken very loudly.”

There are many highly intelligent people in the JLP Cabinet, and most of them have a business bias. Prior to the elections a significant number of them had impressive business plans to develop certain sectors of the society.

Why, therefore, is the JLP showing such a hostile face to business projects and development, especially at this time?

In all the years that our murder rate has risen, Jamaica in 2005 had two world records. We had the most churches per capita and we murdered the most people per capita. So much for the usefulness of the Church in steadying our social rocking chair.

The stupidity of bowing to the Church because of the fear of losing votes can be appreciated in the context that politicians will do stupid things if they believe by doing so it will get them elected. But I honestly thought that this JLP administration was up to speed on the reality of its chances at the polls now, or, if the trend holds, at any election in the next three years.

It needs to accept that it will get one term only and for God’s sake, says this heathen, do what has to be done to stimulate business in Jamaica and show a face to investors that Jamaica appreciates the economic exigencies of the times.

It could be a fact that Jamaica also has more bars per capita than any other country. Makes me wonder if some of the churchmen are not juiced up on Sundays — all the better to rain hellfire on people like me.

observemark@gmail.com