Dear Editor,

Impassioned exhortation to the country to find solutions to the lamentable state of the Jamaican society has never been more necessary. One must be careful, however, not to give the impression that the sole reason for our predicament lies with the public sector. Whether inadvertently or wilfully, other sectors certainly are deficient in ways that have been severely inimical to the development that we so badly need. Recommendations for transformation will not go far enough if the search for solutions does not take that into account.

This argues for a sufficiently balanced recognition of the nature of the Jamaican private sector for instance, and its powerful role from the very beginning, in the evolution of the society. So far, but for very few exceptions, emphasis on the public sector as the bane of our existence does not even suggest that the private sector should be examined in a similar way.

Reforming the public sector is, of course, a necessary condition for recovery, but that is quite insufficient. In fact, this skewed representation does an injustice to a private sector which is as much a product of our history as is the public sector, and consequently suffers from its own deficiencies. To presume that our salvation rests with the private sector as presently constituted does not quite go far enough, for it is just as plausibly a part of the problem, and of course, the solution.

Curiously, but not surprisingly, the views of John Public reflect just such a lopsided perspective. No wonder, since this has always been our collective mantra. An important part of the reason for this could be that recorders of Jamaica’s history focus almost exclusively on the political – government and public sector – whether in the age of empire, slavery, colonialism, self-government or independence. Serious analysis and ventilation of our social and economic history have more or less been ignored. And this continues to be so even after Norman Manley declared the struggle for political control over, and delegated the task of economic and social reconstruction and development to a succeeding generation.

Only when a holistic approach examines the pros and the cons of all sectors will we find a way out of this national crisis. No sector should enter the debate thinking that it is not also a part of the problem.

Hopefully, the tenor of an otherwise noble effort to bring about “change we can believe in” will be recalibrated along these lines. Empowered elements in the society, here and abroad, have an obligation to weigh in, thoughtfully and objectively, with a substantive evaluation of what aspects of the business sector, civil society and the public sector need to be transformed. Continued tinkering has not and will never get us what we should be seeking to achieve.

H Dale Anderson

hdaleanderson@hotmail.com