Jamaica is not a country of comfortable certainties. Take the recent Braeton shootings where police killed seven youths. Like most people my first reaction was “Yes, seven gunmen less on the streets!” But when some reports cast doubts on the police version of events I began to wonder if it had indeed been a case of extra judicial murder.

The North East St. Ann by election was a minor triumph for Jamaican democracy. For once there were no cries of bogus voting. And from all reports violence was almost non-existent, continuing the trend towards peaceful campaigns that has became quite noticeable over the past few elections. We’ve come a long way baby since the near civil war of 1980.

“Big a yard and small abroad” goes an old saying. And since I was in Canada on March 8^th it certainly rang true for me about the North East St. Ann by election. The Jamaican newspapers that week talked of little else, but in the Canadian media it warranted no mention at all. Which is hardly surprising. After all Jamaicans don’t pay attention to Canadian by elections either.

Is Jamaica a good place to live in? Anyone who regularly reads our newspapers regularly would find it difficult to answer yes. More often than not the headlines speak of violent murders, roadblock demonstrations and economic decline. The fact that the Gleaner has a column called “What’s Right With Jamaica” tells us that people are not used to seeing positive stories written about this country.

The Caribbean Court of Justice debate has been an excellent exercise in the democratic exchange of ideas. Every conceivable point of view has been expressed in the media, and anyone interested has been able to contribute to the discussion via radio talk shows or newspaper letters. But then Jamaicans and West Indians are used to nothing less. The idea of our governments making important changes without extensive public discussion is a completely alien concept.

Black history month is a natural time to celebrate Jamaica’s national heroes, and to discuss possible additions to the official pantheon. Now there are those who argue that the entire concept of national heroes is unnecessary. But the truth is that every nation needs figures of excellence who their countrymen can look up to and admire, of whom they can say “They are great, but I am like them and they are like me”. In countries with long and rich histories such figures are thrown up naturally and there may be no need for official recognition. The British government for example certainly does not need to tell its youth that Shakespeare, Newton and Churchill are great men. But in small young countries like Jamaica there is certainly a strong case for the official nurturing of heroes. Would those who argue against national heroes be happy if our youngsters had only foreigners to emulate?

''The icons of the past relied on political instinct. Now, Presidents can use scientific polls and focus groups.'' So wrote Dick Morris, former political strategist for Bill Clinton, in ‘The New Prince: Machiavelli Updated for the Twenty-first Century’.

“There’s no humourist like history” the American author Will Durant once wrote, a truth confirmed yet again by recent events in Cuba. Who in the heyday of communist solidarity could have predicted that then staunch “socialist” allies Cuba and the Czech Republic would one day be embroiled in a human rights controversy? But last month Cuban authorities jailed two Czech citizens on charges of subversion. Their “crime” was meeting Cuban dissidents. Predictably Cuban officials condemned the two men as “American agents” and the dissidents as “counter-revolutionaries”.

“It's not true that life is one damn thing after another - it's the same damn thing over and over”. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s quip pretty much sums up Jamaican politics. For while the names and dates might change, political events here always seem to point to the same conclusions - the PNP continues to be incompetent, the JLP remains disorganized, and the NDM is still incoherent.

“If we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further improvements.” So wrote Edward Bellamy in his 1888 utopian novel “Looking Backwards : 2000 - 1987”.