Dear Editor,

The Jamaica Debt Exchange programme and its consequences, both in concept and execution, will be with us for a very, very long time. It is therefore timely to offer a general comment on at least one aspect of the way in which the whole process was handled, with the hope and entreaty that relief can be granted to classes of investors who have been severely victimised by it.

Everyone will agree that aggressive action was needed to solve what is a very serious problem. And despite the valiant effort of former public defender Howard Hamilton, few if any alternatives to the JDX have been put on the table. So one is left to assume that it is the only credible game in town and on the whole deserves unanimous support, in principle.

Having said that, the apparent official disrespect, disregard and lack of consideration for vulnerable individual investors in these guaranteed government local bonds, is painfully disappointing. One finds it difficult to resist the impression that scant respect was shown for the interest and sensibilities of the average individual victim of the initiative.

In the first place, these individuals were not actively consulted. All the emphasis appears to have been placed on talking to the formal private sector – financial institutions, manufacturers associations, and the like. At the end of the day, provision was made, adequate or not, to assist financial institutions to cope with the effect on their balance sheets. But who spoke to the individual private investor, and what provision was made to cushion the impact on his or her life?

A programme of compulsory acquisition is pronounced a success if 90-odd per cent of holders take up the offer. This dancing-on-my-grave celebration takes place while those ordinary members of the public who invested their future and their present in these instruments, and were not captured by the PATH and National Insurance pension scheme, are vilified and ridiculed as greedy fat cats and lurking “free riders”. But they did not recklessly subscribe to a Ponzi scheme. All of them rationally and carefully accepted an attractive formal offer from their own government, and like conservative risk-averse protectors of their hard-earned life savings, entrusted it to the government for use in the interest of the country as a whole. Clearly, the least they deserve from the architects of this plan are recognition, respect and empathy.

In the second place, it would be cruel and heartless to treat the losses and acute deprivation they must now suffer as a result of this well-intentioned behaviour, as just vagaries of a capitalist system of economic organisation. Think concretely for a moment of the 70-year-old government pensioner of meagre means who did not buy stocks because it was too risky, did not fall prey to the lure of high-flying schemes like Olint and Cash Plus, but parked her modest savings in a fool-proof government paper. She carefully crafted her purchases to earn monthly and quarterly income as a steady cash flow to meet her recurrent and emergency expenditure. Thank goodness, she still retains her principal. But how useful is this to her if the rate of interest is cut almost in half in an environment of continued high inflation, and she cannot touch the invested amount until she is nearly 80 years old – beyond her life expectancy! Surely, even if this is not unconstitutional, she deserves some concession in her twilight years.

Lest we forget, neglect and disrespect breed disaffection, resentment, distrust and alienation. Apparent shortsightedness in the way the process was conducted could therefore endanger the government’s attempt to rescue the economy, since success can be achieved only if we identify with its terms and objective and rally behind the initiative.

Is it not possible to tweak the programme in such a way as to offer some direct relief to particularly disadvantaged and vulnerable groups or individuals, without unravelling the package? Also, could this not have been done without endangering the prospects for the IMF agreement? As it is, we do not even know if this was ever considered. While the private company owes us no such consideration, doesn’t the government?

So over to you, Mr Public Defender, for respect surely is due. So too is relief.

H Dale Anderson

hdaleanderson@hotmail.com