Blame it on our wonderful weather and seductive scenery, but Jamaica has never had a strong work ethic. Our ‘miracle economy’ GDP growth between 1952 and 1972 was fuelled by bauxite and tourism. Our governments since then have simply borrowed and spent, with the electorate’s full approval. While we have produced a few world class businesses, many enterprises here have thrived not because they were run efficiently, but because they were well connected and protected from foreign competition.

But globalization has created a one world market, and Jamaica can not compete unless a new paradigm of national attitudes is forged. You can’t consume like a first world country – and our appetite for Kentucky chicken, Nike shoes and Tommy Hilfiger clothes seems insatiable – if you don’t produce like one. We will have to work not only harder but smarter, and learn to defray short-term pleasures for long term gains. In short, Jamaicans at home will have to become as diligent as Jamaicans abroad.

Structural adjustment is never painless, and rising crime and falling growth are frequent short term side effects. At such times people naturally blame the government. But not even the best administration can make a country with low productivity levels prosperous overnight. Sustained growth requires a long term recipe of good education, high saving, the rule of law, openness to trade, low taxes, and sound monetary and fiscal policies.

Jamaica is not doing badly on most counts. A relatively large portion of our budget goes into education, our savings rate is fairly high, and the rule of law is established here. Since 1989 we have lowered trade barriers, abolished exchange controls, and cut income taxes. Many criticize government monetary policy. But in Jamaica’s current situation exchange and interest rates are buckets in a well. If one goes up, the other must go down. There are no easy choices, and Omar Davis has at least stuck with one chosen path. Flip flopping might result in both slow growth and high inflation.

Government fiscal policy however has been disastrous. Jamaica has the worlds’ fourth largest proportionate budget deficit - adding in FINSAC would make us number two. In real terms public spending has increased by over 50% since 1992. This is the result of both weak leadership and a pork barrel loving electorate insistent on living above its means. The April gas riots showed just how unwilling Jamaicans are to tighten their belts. But the government must soon either raise taxes, cut spending or do both. No business or country can continually spend more than it earns without eventually going bankrupt.

The harsh economic fallout of restructuring has contributed significantly to the doubling of Jamaica’s murder rate since 1989. And the huge amount of illegal guns in the country is clearly a legacy of ‘donmanship’ politics. But most murders taking place now are drug and gang related. American ghettos are just as crime ridden as those in Kingston, suggesting that violence is at root a social and not a political problem.

We could no doubt cut crime by simply shooting all suspected gunmen and imprisoning deportees on arrival. But as the regular protests over police killings show, the thought of extra-judicial state executions is abhorrent to Jamaicans and is rightfully seen as a cure worse than the disease. Most of us, thankfully, still believe in the rights of the individual.

Winston Churchill once called democracy ‘the worst form of government ever invented, except for all the others’. Jamaica is facing many difficulties, but preserving our liberal democratic heritage must be the nation’s highest priority. The side of freedom has won all major wars. No country which has held fast to the principles of free elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary has failed to overcome the problems it faced. A fully democratic Jamaica has no need to fear the future. If our democracy is compromised, then all may be lost.

Mr. Patterson’s comment that ‘the law should not be a shackle’ and Dr. Phillips categorization of criticisms of the country as a ‘crime’ may have been slips of the tongue. But parliamentarians should never talk carelessly about such basic tenets of democracy as the rule of law and free speech. And elected governments should not fundamentally alter proven democratic structures without consulting the people.

Conflicts of interest are common in small countries like Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. Thus the right to appeal to the Privy Council is regarded abroad not as a colonial vestige, but as a cornerstone of our democracy. As the World Bank’s 1997 World Development Report puts it

‘To some extent, extraterritorial and international restraints can substitute for limitations on the ability of national institutions to enforce rules or to signal credibly that the rules will remain reasonably stable over time…Confidence in the Jamaican judicial system is buttressed by the fact that the United Kingdom’s Privy Council serves as its appellate court of last resort.’

There are rational arguments for and against eliminating the Privy Council option. But no responsible government would take so significant a step without holding a referendum. If it unilaterally removes the Privy Council right of appeal after a cursory debate in a rubber stamp parliament, the government will send a message to the world that Jamaica can not be trusted. Caesar’s wife must not only be faithful, she must be seen to be faithful.

Even though the JLP held all seats after the boycotted 1983 elections, the PNP then still presented a formidable electoral threat. The present self-destructive JLP has almost no credibility, which means Mr. Patterson is virtually an elected dictator without opposition and the most powerful Prime Minister in Jamaica’s history. Surely he must feel the spirits of Norman and Busta asking him to use this power wisely, and not damage the essential fabric of democracy which so many Jamaicans worked so long and hard to build.

When much is given, much is expected. If Mr. Patterson uses his unprecedented powers to strengthen the nation’s democratic institutions, he may one day take his place among our national heroes. If he uses them merely to strengthen the hold of his party on power, history will judge him harshly. Will Mr. Patterson go down as the man who shepherded his country through its greatest challenge? Or will he be known to posterity as the man who destroyed Jamaica’s proud tradition of liberal democracy? The choice is his alone.