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Published: Sunday | June 12, 2005

Democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others.- Winston Churchill

CHURCHILL'S DICTUM has always been accepted in these parts as a self-evident truth. But lately a lot of Jamaicans have begun to wonder if this island is not an exception to the general rule.

Our murder rate is not only the highest in the world, it's headed toward a level unprecedented for a country not at war. And how can a nation do much worse than not being able to guarantee the most minimum of human rights to its people ­ namely freedom from violent death?

Political scientists everywhere must be looking at Jamaica with a great deal of curiosity. Because from the big picture, our political system works pretty well.

Our leaders are an accurate reflection of the people's will. The government respects the constitutional law of the land. And the press freely reports all that happens. So how did we come to be the most murderous nation on earth?

PEOPLE'S CHOICE

This is usually the point where ideologues try to drag in that nonsensical 'Jamaica is not a real democracy' red herring. But none of Jamaica's leaders has ever been anything but the people's choice.

We have had seven chief and prime ministers ­ Alexander Bustamante, Norman Manley, Donald Sangster, Hugh Shearer, Michael Manley, Edward Seaga and Percival Patterson.

None of them inherited their positions. None of them imposed themselves on the nation by brute force. None of them descended from the sky in spaceships and were put into Gordon House by aliens.

All of them attained office by getting more votes than their opponents in mostly free and fair elections. Never has the validity of any election in Jamaica ever been challenged by either local or foreign observers. No losing party has ever accused the other of gaining its overall victory by voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing.

Yes, some nefarious and unsavoury practices have taken place. But the result of every single general election in Jamaica has been an unequivocal reflection of the will of the people.

So when people start spouting off about Jamaica not being a real democracy, I quietly move away. Life is too short to argue with fanatics whose only logic is that if you repeat something loudly enough and often enough it must be true.

ABUSE OF POWER

History certainly does not support the argument that our leaders have regularly abused their power. Perhaps Michael Manley could be accused of doing this when he held elections under a state of emergency in 1976.

But even he in 1980 held elections so free and fair that he lost. Edward Seaga abided scrupulously to the letter and spirit of the law while presiding over an oppositionless parliament for most of the 1980s, and he, too, oversaw elections that booted him out of office.

Similarly, even though P.J. Patterson's party held over 80 of the seats during the 1990s and could have rammed through any legislation it wanted, he did nothing to disturb Jamaica's democratic balance.

In fact, during this time he actually took a lot of power out of politician's hands by setting up an independent Electoral Office and an independent Electoral Advisory Board.

And despite his party's angry dissatisfaction with the Privy Council's ruling that the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) could not become Jamaica's final court of appeal without a referendum, Mr. Patterson has accepted the decision.

NO EXTRAVAGANCE

A Jamaicans For Justice member heatedly asserted to me recently that Jamaica's leaders would be more dictatorial than Castro if they got the chance. But where is the basis for such a statement?

Nor have our elected officials been a particularly rapacious lot. To my knowledge, no politician in Jamaica has became spectacularly rich while in office. No doubt, they feather their nests well, but not so far to the point of shameless extravagance.

Take the striking example of Seaga. Not many persons run into financial difficulties after being the virtually unchallenged leader of their country for a decade. It may not say much for his business acumen. But it certainly showed he was not in the same class as the Asian and Latin American and African kleptocrats who leave offices with Swiss bank accounts of hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars.

BLAMING GOVERNMENT

Businessman are very fond of blaming all our economic ills on the government. But on a scale of one to 10, has our public sector performed any worse than our private sector? Jamaica may not be a particularly well governed country, but then it's not exactly a model of business efficiency.

Our politicians and businessmen are pretty much cut from the same cloth, well meaning in general and less selfish than in most countries but lacking the ability to concentrate and not especially hard working when compared to their counterparts in developed countries. Which is why it's like hearing pot call kettle black when they accuse each other of hypocrisy.

Especially since in my experience, they both spend most of their time ­ at least the male ones ­ talking about or actively seeking women. The fact is that the male powers that be have little desire to change a Jamaican status quo where there are hordes of young women seeking father figures to mind them financially and otherwise. Even though the flipside is hordes of unemployable young men who see their only route to respect as the gun.

Not that the high-horse journalists who constantly castigate both are any better. This country could do with a lot less self-righteousness from all quarters. Not only are we all in this thing together, we all share the blame in some way.

So why are we always pretending to be holier than thou? Or let's put it this way, who has more baby mothers ­ the politicians, businessmen or journalists? Because all the finger pointing and fancy words cannot hide the fact that the root of Jamaica's crime problem is fatherlessness.

In my view, we have the highest murder rate in the world primarily because we have the highest rate of absentee fatherhood in the world. Can it be mere coincidence that one of the most notorious and feared bands of young criminals in the country is called 'the fatherless gang'?

HYPOCRITES IN MEDIA

None of this is meant to let the politicians from both sides who have led us into our present mess off the hook. We wouldn't be where they are if they had not governed abysmally. But to condemn our elected officials wholesale is in effect to condemn the country.

They may be every bit as greedy, unscrupulous and lazy as people claim. But our 60 MPs are more or less the best of those Jamaicans willing to put themselves forward for public office. Whether they are for the people may be an open question, but our politicians are indisputably of the people, by the people.

We can lambaste them all we want, but where are we going to find any better? People talk about a 'new generation of politicians' being needed. But where are they to come from?

Certainly not the columnists and radio talk hosts who constantly criticise but have never put themselves forward as potential representatives of the people.

Or even the business big shots who love to make grand pronouncements. Because you cannot run a country by ranting on the radio or fulminating in the newspaper or making buzzword luncheon speeches.

Am I the only one who is getting thoroughly sick of those who constantly attack and denigrate and run down other people and their ideas and initiatives but never seem to put forward any concrete solutions of their own? (And how is that for holier than thou self-righteousness? All I need is to stick 'hypocrites' in there somewhere. I guess pontificating is an occupational hazard.)

Still one man's meat is another man's poison. And in a healthy media you need voices from all parts of the spectrum. This Jamaica certainly has. There is a lot for journalists to complain about in this country, but the inability to criticise whoever and whatever they wish loudly and undisturbed is not one of them.

The great strong point of democracy has always been that it is self-correcting. Yes, a people might temporarily become enamoured of the wrong ideas and elect the wrong people. But a vigorous free press keeps the great public debate going until a new national consensus can be arrived at.

And free and fair elections allow a people to replace leaders found unfit for the job with more suitable candidates. It's a system that when allowed to operate properly has never failed to eventually remedy a country's problems. So why should it fail Jamaica?

But if it does, there's no point trying to blame others. The problem is not out there. As they say, we have met the enemy and he is all of us.