Patting yourself on the back for your refusal and/or reluctance to vote in your country’s local and/or national elections is a supreme act of disrespect to, if not betrayal of our forebears who invested blood, sweat, and tears, so that we choose who govern us.

Last Friday, I heard a caller to a local radio talk show congratulating himself for having never voted in an election. He said he was 35 years old. I suspect there are dozens like him. That a citizen of this country does not exercise his/her civic duty to vote should never be regarded as a badge of honour.

I have voted in every election since I became eligible. I will continue to do so. I believe it is my solemn duty to help choose who represents me.

Voting the couch, or staying home on election day, voter apathy, whatever name or term that is given to the refusal or reluctance to exercise the hard-won and democratic right to choose the men and women who significantly help to decide the quality of our individual and national futures should be frowned upon. If we are too busy or lazy to choose the direction of our country, others will.

I listened intently to the mentioned radio caller as he reeled off the reasons for not voting. First, he opined that all Jamaican politicians were corrupt. This is not true. I believe Jamaica has many decent, God-fearing, political representatives, who genuinely want to see this country strive and thrive. Of course, we have had severely corrupt ones in our politics and will have more in the future, irrespective of the anti-corruption mechanisms that are set in place.

The fact is all occupations/professions have those who succumb to dishonest dealings. It is also true that there are fewer incidents of political corruption today in Jamaica, compared to 10, 20, or even 50 years ago. Why? On the whole, citizens have become far less tolerant of corrupt actions by political representatives. And several democratic institutions have been set up to monitor the activities and decision-making processes of our elected and selected representatives at all levels of the political ladder. Massive advances in technology have also helped to curb corrupt political activities.

Second, the mentioned caller submitted that our politicians have done very little to facilitate a better Jamaica. Overwhelming evidence does not agree with such a view. I humbly invite those who have embraced this mistaken notion to read, for example, the findings of the Moyne Commission. The Moyne Commission was given the broad mandate to “investigate social and economic conditions in Barbados, British Guiana, British Honduras, Jamaica, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Windward Islands, and matters connected therewith, and to make recommendations”. Why? Massive strikes and riots in Jamaica and the region in the 1930s alerted the British that all was not well in her colonies.

In summary, the commission found that conditions in which the black population lived were abominable. It specifically pinpointed great deficiencies in access to and quality education for the masses, widespread and deplorable health conditions, frighteningly high rates of infant mortality, rampant juvenile delinquency, severely high levels of unemployment, and a mountain of related social and economic ills that blighted the self-worth and life chances of the vast majority of the population. In other words, if you were not born white, owned property, and/or had a wealthy benefactor, “dawg nyam yuh supper”, as we say in the streets today.

I could cite findings from several other reputable and verified sources, which present copious evidence that social, economic, religious, and political conditions in pre-independent Jamaica were systematically crafted and executed in a decidedly disadvantageous manner in relation to the majority black population. Those who submit that the mentioned conditions have barely improved since Independence need to have their eyes examined, and their minds cleared of the debilitations of facts-aversion and facts-resistance.

Sure, examples can be cited of and for Jamaica’s underachievement. And that approach can be applied in relation to all countries, globally. But Jamaica has progressed appreciably in many areas pertinent to social, economic and political growth and development since Independence.

Yes, there have been several disastrous interruptions to our advance, particularly in the 1970s and 1990s. Should we have progressed further, faster? Resoundingly, yes. To say, however, that we have been stunted for the last 60 years is absolutely not true.

Today, Jamaica’s economic recovery from the financial débâcle presided over by the P J Patterson Administration of the 90s, with Dr Omar Davies as finance and planning minister, is being hailed globally as a go-to template, especially for small economies which are heavily indebted. Jamaica’s economic recovery, which several reputable economic institutions have dubbed a “miracle”, was not the work of aliens from outer space. Neither was our rise like phoenix from the ashes from the near crippling economic meltdown of the 90s, which almost annihilated Jamaica’s black business class, the handiwork of a topanaris class, which Mark Golding, leader of the Opposition and People’s National Party (PNP) president seems anxious to resurrect.

Recall Golding said: “The Jamaican people need a new direction. The Jamaican people need a Government that cares for them. The Jamaican people need an honest Government that will look after their interest. The Jamaican people need the People’s National Party (PNP) back in Government with Mark Jefferson Golding as the prime minister, and a topanaris set of people ‘round me to run the country the right way in the best interest of the people.”

Golding said these words while speaking at the St Thomas East Divisional Conference of his party last July. Golding, evidently, let the proverbial “puss out of the bag”. He revealed to the gathering and Jamaica what kinds of individuals would constitute his inner-inner circle, if he becomes our prime minister: Topanaris!

Oligarchy, this is the name which is given to the type of rulership which Golding seems to have put forward in St Thomas East. Oligarchy is the “rule of the few”. It is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people might be distinguished by nobility, wealth, family ties, education, or corporate, religious or military control. Prior to our Independence a very close cousin of this iniquitous system existed here. We must never go that route ever, again.

The economic fiasco of the 70s and 90s must never, happen again either. The international plaudits which Jamaica continues to receive must count for something among our own people, albeit that I recognise that one of the peculiarities of cultures since time immemorial is a king who is seldom honoured in his own country. Nevertheless, those of us who have the knowledge and access to media platforms must never abandon our duty to remind those who don’t, that our economic recovery template was a home-grown creation.

Recall that in 2010, Prime Minister Bruce Golding, along with Audley Shaw, the then minister of finance and the public service, began decisive actions, including two domestic debt exchanges to bring Jamaica’s debt trajectory on a more sustainable path. That was the genesis of Jamaica’s economic recovery programme after the PNP set the house ablaze. The reforms were sensibly continued by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller with, Dr Peter Phillips as minister of finance and the public service. Prime Minister Andrew Holness with Dr Nigel Clarke, have admirably fast-tracked the reforms since 2016. The good work and results of the Holness Administration are evidenced today in Jamaica’s best macro-economic state in 50 years.

Those like the mentioned caller who continue to bellyache that local political representatives have done very little to advance this country need to “wheel and come again”, as we say in local parlance.

The good book says, “Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” I agree. Sadly, there is a severely and corrosive kind of mean-spiritedness that is popular in this land. It blinds those afflicted to all sense of fairness. It is very dangerous. Why? It is a deleterious mental cul-de-sac.

Some among us, who desperately seek State power, are working overtime to convince especially the unsuspecting that the re-embrace of an unusable past which stunted the growth and development of Jamaica. Folks need to “look outta dem yeye” (be very discerning) and apply common sense to everything these populists spew.

On the hustings they have been tacitly and explicitly spouting that Jamaica’s robust macro-economic achievements and good roads in particular “cyaan nyam”. This is a serious warning and reminder that these reconstituted socialists, many of them don’t think beyond their noses, if at all so far. I believe Jamaicans must not allow these misleaders to con us, again, with their contorted pessimism and intellectual snobbery. Dopamine rushes in politics is their specialty. They, therefore, choreograph their messages to the emotions. The only effective antidote to their trickery is frequent cold showers of facts and constant self-reminders of their tomfoolery and retrospective fabrications.

The fact is good roads can nyam. Without goods roads, it will cost more to transport good and services. If for example, the farmers in St Elizabeth, the country’s breadbasket, don’t have good roads to transport their produce to the Coronation and other markets around the country, prices would be significantly higher. If the cement company at Rockfort does not have good roads to transport its product in Jamaica, the prices are higher. Good roads mean big savings, for rich and poor alike.

Low inflation, a stable dollar, lower debt, positive international credit ratings, low unemployment, etc, also can nyam. If there is suffocating inflation, as existed in the 70s and 90s, the prices for basic items like rice, sugar, four, cooking oil, etc, would be much higher. If Jamaica has choking debt, like we did up to 13 years ago, there is less money to increase the pay of teachers, police, nurses, doctors, build and repairs hospitals, clinics, schools, police stations, buy vehicles for the security forces, ambulances for the health sector, garbage trucks, new buses for the Jamaica Urban Transport Company (JUTC), and I could go on.

The fact is, without strong economic fundamentals, which populists everywhere have failed at creating, populists resort to their go-to template, crippling taxation, the pernicious money illusion, debilitating borrowing, and the deception of redistribution in absence of prior creation and production.

The result is run-away decay and ruination of public infrastructure and institutions, biting austerity and wage restrictions, ballooning debt, massive unemployment, debilitating inflation, and a near-pervasive social malaise. The merchants of tomfoolery, who are going around the country telling folks that good economic fundamental cyaan nyam, don’t mean Jamaica any good.

Garfield Higgins is an educator, journalist and a senior advisor to the minister of education & youth. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.