Election drivel
SEVERAL years ago, I made my first trip to Brandon Hill, St Andrew, in order to fulfil certain Episcopal duties. I recall this as an awe-inspiring event as I climbed those beautiful mountains, with a climate more inviting than that of Kingston. What intrigued me most was the seemingly well-manicured coffee plantations that dotted the mountains in every direction.
Last Sunday, I made a visit to the same area and decided to take the opportunity to share with some young persons something of the community as they had never been there before, and were not even sure in what parish they were currently standing.
I took them to a vantage point to show them the coffee plantations and to let them know about the Blue Mountain coffee grown in that and surrounding communities. To say the least, I was flabbergasted to be confronted by hills covered with a lot of bamboo and the absence of the coffee plantations.
I searched in vain to find those fields that were evident from almost every direction. I must have lost some credibility among those young persons who must have thought that I was lying about the nature of life in that community.
I learnt subsequently from some residents that coffee cultivation has taken a nose-dive in that and many other communities with serious consequences for employment and the economic situation of the residents. As I drove back down, the few coffee trees I saw were obviously untended and the seeming level of deterioration and neglect of the community was evident.
There was no domestic water in the pipes and the roads are breaking away at points or in need of serious repairs. I could not help wondering what it means for the people of Brandon Hill and the surrounding communities that we are going to the polls soon.
It appears to me that this community is a kind of paradigm for where many communities find themselves at this time. The country is facing very difficult economic times, a situation which is placing tremendous limitations on the resources which are available in the public purse for developmental and growth-oriented projects.
Indeed, the country is currently in the grips of the conditionalities laid down by the International Monetary Fund, and which have basically emasculated this or any future government in terms of its ability to steer the development of our nation.
A primary interest of this and other related international agencies — as is now evident in Greece, Italy, and to some degree France — seems to be the protection of the interests of the financial institutions and brokers who need to ensure that their debt is repaid and their financial viability guaranteed, regardless of the consequences to the people of the nation.
This situation seems to take on irrational proportions when the very countries which are facing economic challenges find that the interest rates being charged on bonds take on outrageous proportions, driving them to the brink of collapse, when the supposed intention is to be part of a rescue plan, while addressing the risk factor and offering an assurance that the debt will be repaid.
Now that we are literally counting down the days to the next general election, the two major political parties are engaging each other and the population in side shows which do not address the crucial issues which are confronting us as a nation.
The Government has chosen to be silent on the status of the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, as if it is a private party matter for the inner circle. One can only conclude that the intention is to seek a mandate to govern, if the nation will buy what amounts to “puss in a bag”, and then disclose the nature of the revised agreement with which it is prepared to enter into with the fund.
At the same time, the Opposition seems to be of the opinion that it is the Government of the day alone which has a responsibility to speak to this issue. On the contrary, we need to hear a word from the Opposition concerning the direction in which it would take the country under an IMF arrangement. Indeed, the electorate should be hearing some meaningful exchanges between the two sides on this very urgent and pressing matter.
Instead, we are being fed a diet of tangential issues. We are preoccupied with issues of youth versus age; issues of dual citizenship and eligibility for election, when neither party has had the stomach for changing the law when in power; and the usual round of character assassinations from party platforms with the threat of legal action, and the demand for restoration of a damaged political poster by the candidate of the opposing side.
So I return to a place like Brandon Hill and ask the question, what does all of this tangential preoccupation have to do with the life of people struggling to survive and to make a living? When will the people hear what it would take to bring back some gainful employment and income generation to their community?
One cannot ignore the fact that much of the political discussion in the media seems to be focused around the restoration of trust in the middle class and improvements in the macro-economics of the country. It is all good and well to talk about macro-economic recovery and to assert that this will bring the necessary development to the nation, but one cannot help wondering if what we are talking about are improvements in the condition of the middle class with consequent improvement of social indicators affecting that group.
Jobs are being promised by both political parties at this time, and various statistics are being churned out in terms of the number of persons who would be employed in new projects. Not only are many of the jobs being identified low-paying service-related, but the promise of large scale job creation needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
Part of the problem the world over, and which is creating huge unemployment in the United States of America, and the developed nations of Europe, is the fact that technology is making the human factor in production redundant in large measure. We will not be seeing the large-scale employment of the days of the screwdriver industries.
It is becoming evident that much of the emerging job opportunities worldwide are coming from small-scale business operations. So the solution to the employment problems may not reside so much in which political party can make glowing announcements concerning their projected data for job creation, but what strategies will they be pursuing to create the kind of environment that will stimulate and nurture small-scale entrepreneurial activity.
This may still not hold much prospect for the people who have invested in growing coffee as their livelihood, whether on a small or large scale. One of the problems with the promotion of monoculture, such as coffee, is that once there is a downturn, disaster lurks. What prospect is there for these rural people for diversification and income generation?
One element missing from the political campaigning is the laying bare with the people the nature of the demands which the current situation will place on them and what part we can play in making a creative response to our situation. We continue to look for messianic figures who will come to our rescue and do the magic that will make things right for us.
Now that we have become tired of the leadership of the aged we seem inclined so search among the youth for better prospects. Any aspiring politician and political leader must begin to level with people in terms of a two-way process which speaks to what they will bring to the table on the one hand, and what is being demanded of the people on the other hand.
It can hardly come as a surprise that more and more people are becoming cynical of the political process and are opting not to participate by voting. When you live in a community in which, from day to day, you do not have running water in your pipe and have to resort to what are now primitive ways to secure water that may not, as potable water, be safe for use; and when you have to traverse roads that reflect neglect, and persons in governance seem deaf to pleas for help; and when persons can speak freely about feeling that their community is being victimised for being on the wrong side of the political divide, what else can one expect but cynicism and a lack of any sense of hope that things will get better for their community?
It is one thing for political leaders of both major parties to decide to walk through garrison communities as a supposed symbolic expression of a commitment to end garrison politics, but it is a totally different thing to get both political parties to end their victimisation of constituencies and communities that are deemed to be hostile and deserving of punishment because their residents voted for the other side of the political spectrum.
It seems that both major political parties are working in tandem to see who can outdo the other in providing a better side show or just outdo the other with drivel. It seems a strange coincidence that at the time that the governing party seems to be set to score points by embarrassing the Opposition by bringing the Trafigura investigation to the courts within weeks of an election, the auditor general has released a damning report of the Government’s handling of the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Project.
While I would not want to impute any motive to the officers of the court or to the auditor general, the timing of both events serve to highlight the fact that the story of corruption in governance is an ongoing saga, and that both political parties, when in power, do not have the guts to have those responsible for corruption in governance indicted and brought to justice. Perhaps such a course of action is only reserved for private citizens.
The nature of the campaigning in the public arena so far has followed much of the old-style politics and has not demonstrated much of maturity in the conduct of the same. We are still being treated with what amounts to drivel when we need to hear some hard facts about the real nature of the nation’s situation, what each political party is proposing to offer beyond lofty words and promises, and above all, what is being asked of us as a nation if we are to move forward toward growth and development.
Nothing short of this holds out much prospect of hope for the many communities in our nation which look like Brandon Hill, and its once thriving economic life.
Howard Gregory is the Suffragan Bishop of Montego Bay