Is Jamaica better off today that it was when the PNP came to power 11 years ago? The facts say no. In 1988 there were 414 murders in Jamaica, the economy grew by 5%, and it took less than 6 Jamaican dollars to buy 1 US dollar. In 1999 there were 848 murders, the economy shrunk and the exchange rate was 42 to 1. A government with such a dismal record should have no chance of being re-elected. Yet the PNP is odds on to win its fourth consecutive term.
Never say never is the first rule of politics, so it may be premature to write the National Democratic Movement’s obituary. But with declining poll ratings, ineffective leadership and muddled policies, the NDM increasingly appears a spent force.
Jamaican political parties are often said to lack imagination. But over the past decade the Jamaica Labour Party has consistently come up with new and innovative ways to alienate voters and damage its electoral credibility. The gang of 5, the western 11, the local government boycott, the Mike Henry and Abe Doubdab affairs, the committee for the rebuilding of the JLP – not even the PNP in its wildest fantasies could have envisioned such a litany of Labour self-destruction.
The United States claims to be the land of the free. But like many television ads, the reality is very different from the image. The US contains only 5% of the world’s population but over 25% of its prisoners, and America’s incarceration rate of over 730 per 100,000 is the highest on earth. (Jamaica’s 135 per 100,000 is fairly normal.) In 1980 there were 500,000 inmates in the US. There are now over 2 million, two thirds of whom have been convicted for non-violent crimes, mainly drug offences. Average prison sentences have also increased, partly as a result of “three strikes and you are out” legislation mandating long fixed jail terms for repeat offenders. All this is the result of laws making it easier to arrest and convict suspects.
There are reasonable arguments both for and against replacing the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as Jamaica’s final appellate court with a Caribbean Court of Justice. But even many who favour such a move in principle think the process is being handled in a very unsatisfactory manner. The entire matter seems not to have been properly thought out. Have estimates been made of how much it would cost to establish and maintain such a court? How will it be funded? What will happen if one of the signatory countries to such a court withdraws? Will it be a case like the West Indies Federation of “Ten minus one equals zero”? If the CCJ thus falls apart, will the Jamaican Supreme Court be our final court of appeal?
Many claim the Privy Council right of appeal is an archaic colonial relic. But the 1997 World Development Bank Report - “The State In A Changing World” - argues otherwise
That the first modern democracy should still choose its head of state on grounds of birth defies common sense. But though man is a logical being in theory, he is seldom completely so in practice. Tradition is often a better master of passion than reason, and history judges not by what should work but by what has. For over 300 years constitutional British monarchs have reigned serenely in mankind’s most durable democracy. Every other political system known has been interrupted by coup, civil war and assassination. An institution which lasts so long and bears such fruit provides its own justification.
The Walker pay report leaves no doubt that something is rotten in the state boardrooms of Jamaica. It catalogues a pattern of abuse of government guidelines at the Bank of Jamaica, National Investment Bank of Jamaica, the National Development Bank, Jamaica Promotions Limited, HEART/NTA and Port Authority. It blames the problems on a failure to communicate adequately, ignorance of proper procedure, and silence on the part of government ministers from the various portfolios.
In our era of cultural relativism few unqualified statements can be made about politics. But Winston Churchill’s assertion that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others” brooks no argument.
“Religion belongs to the infancy of human reason which we are now outgrowing” said Bertrand Russell. John Lennon put this sentiment to song - “Imagine there’s no heaven... And no religion too… Imagine all the people living for today”.