Divide and decay: Two Jamaicas
HAVE some of our political representatives totally lost touch with the contemporary needs of Jamaica?
Two recent news items, one involving the Member of Parliament (MP) for St Thomas Western
James Robertson and the other mayor of Spanish Town and aspirant for vice-president of the People’s National Party (PNP) Norman Scott, left me in no doubt as to the answer to the aforementioned question.
The front-page story in this newspaper last Sunday, July 11, 2021 was a powerful reminder — in case some had wittingly or unwittingly suspended reality — that we still live in what has been referred to as two Jamaicas.
Recall that the phrase “two Jamaicas” grabbed our national headlines when, on April 21, 1961, Edward Seaga, then an Opposition Member of the pre-independence Legislative Council, delivered a speech which famously elaborated the yawning social and economic gaps between the vast majority who owned very little and the minority that owned a lot.
Sixty years later, the cogency of Seaga’s “haves and the havenots” speech is unmistakably loud in numerous facets of Jamaican life. The chasms are perhaps most evident today in the precipitous gaps between the country’s information-rich and information-poor. We have a huge crisis on hand.
CRUEL AND UNJUST
Slow and no mobile and Internet connectivity are socially and economically disabling, extremely so. To fully understand these realities some will have to put on their minority suit in our majority culture. I suspect that even a brief simulation in that respect is far too unbearable for some.
Consider this: ‘30 minutes of bloody hell — No phone signal, little help, so St Thomas man bleeds out and succumbs to gunshot wounds’.
This Jamaica Observer news item said, among other things: “For half an hour, 29year-old Romaine Wright lay on the roadside in Swamp Road, St Thomas, after being shot twice by thugs about 8:20 pm, last Wednesday.
“The mother of his children stood over his body
desperately making multiple calls to the police that never went through because of what she described as the poor phone signal history in the community.
“Despairingly, she hoped and prayed that she would’ve seen a taxi passing by, which isn’t the norm in the area.”
If nothing else, the gravity of this news item should ring home the point that we cannot continue to have a society of two Jamaicas. The heartbreaking circumstance in which this Jamaican citizen died is appalling. I have deliberately used the words Jamaican citizen because, believe it or not, there are some among us, in high and low places, who by virtue of their actions repudiate the application of citizen [with all the attendant constitutional rights] to some of our fellow countrymen because of class, economic status, political allegiance, gradation of skin colour, address, affinity or lack thereof with the Queen’s English, etc. Of course, too, some of our countrymen do not see themselves as citizens. That is more than half the problem. But, I digress; I will delve into that matter at another time.
What is equally appalling is this befuddling comment from James Robertson: “It is a real issue,” he said, while calling for the media to help in alerting telecommunication providers Digicel and Flow as well as the “relevant government agencies that should be monitoring their delivery of service”. Robertson’s response smacks of indifference at a minimum. It seems he was casually passing the buck. This is worrying, especially since he is no political neophyte. He has been the MP for St Thomas Western since 2002. He served in the Senate, was a minister of mining and energy, and is currently a member of these two parliamentary committees (regulations as well as infrastructure and physical development).
In a half self-respecting political environment one expects that an MP would have said something along the lines of: “I have written to Digicel and Flow dozens of times regarding this scourge on my people. The fact that this awful incident has taken place is an unpleasant reminder that our telecommunications services are not meeting the needs of the citizens in especially rural parts like these. Nonetheless, I am going to triple my efforts to remedy the slow and no mobile and Internet connectivity problems.” I was expecting to hear the MP, say, “I have reached out to the portfolio minister on numerous occasions. And, I have also made several representations in Parliament on the matter of the huge deficits in broadband infrastructure in my constituency. I am happy to provide the proof.”
Instead, Robertson spewed claptrap, which, among other things, reinforces long-standing voter hesitancy. It obviously has not dawned on him that 63 per cent of voters did not cast a ballot in our last parliamentary election. In many jurisdictions, some even younger that ours, Robertson’s resignation would have been asked for, or otherwise demanded. I have said it in this space before, but it bears repeating, until we demand that systems are put in place to significantly prevent the abuse of citizens — which has become commonplace over many decades — there will be many more Jodian Fearons, numerous Shanique Armstrongs, and scores of Romaine Wrights.
The nauseating abuses that happen to some of our citizens are riveted in classism. They happen to certain categories of Jamaicans. Tragically, the affected are yet to realise that we have the power in our hands to stop the abuses.
LONG IN THE MAKING
The skills of a clairvoyant were not needed to forecast what happened to Romaine Wright. Recall that after road trips into all but two parishes, I listed these simmering cauldrons, among other things, in my The Agenda column on November 24, 2019.
i) “frequent power outages and the negative impact on lives and livelihoods;
ii) suffocating bank charges and shoddy customer service;
iii) destroying of people’s homes, livestock, etc by bauxite soot; and
iv) deteriorating telecommunications services.”
In relation to number four, I said the following: “Hundreds are unhappy because our telecommunications services are deteriorating, and the regulator, the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), appears to be fast asleep. The intolerable frequency of dropped calls and the declining quality of data and related services are matters of national importance. In this day and age, the Internet is an indispensable tool. Thousands of livelihoods depend on fast and reliable Internet services.”
We are seven months into 2021 and the cries for reliable, mobile and Internet connectivity, modern broadband services outside of Kingston and St Andrew, St Catherine, St James, and parts of Manchester and Clarendon are even louder.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness has been speaking about the vast opportunities of the digital economy for the last five and half years. Those opportunities will remain pipe dreams as long as more than half the country is severely disadvantaged by our great digital divide. This stifling division will cause further impoverishment.
MORE REQUIRED
One of the purposes of a Government is the improvement of the conditions of those on whose behalf it governs. I don’t think the mayor of Spanish Town, Norman Scott, understands this fundamental principle.
Check this: ‘Spanish Town mayor says fire damage to businesses could have been avoided’. The Nationwide News story noted these and other details: “Mayor of Spanish Town Norman Scott says a fire that ravaged five businesses could have been prevented if the area’s fire brigade had a working phone line.
“The establishments were destroyed during a fire at Brunswick Avenue in the parish capital on Saturday morning. Five shops suffered serious losses.
“They housed furniture, barbering, grocery, and machine establishments...
“While the cause of the fire is still not known, Nationwide News understands that some residents had to drive to Spanish Town Fire Station to report the blaze.
“This after many unsuccessful attempts to reach the fire department by phone.” (NNN, July 12, 2021)
As CNN’S Don Lemon is inclined to say: “You can’t make this stuff up!”
Scott has been a councillor for the Greendale Division in St Catherine South Central since 1998, and mayor since 2012. Recently he announced his decision to run for one of the four vice-president positions in the People’s National Party’s (PNP) upcoming elections at the annual conference
in September. Maybe he is even harbouring thoughts of becoming prime minister of Jamaica.
Did Scott know about the non-functioning phone line at the fire station before the businesses were reduced to ashes. If he did, what did he do about it? An inoperable phone line at a fire station, I should think, is an important matter for the consideration and quick corrective action of a responsible parish council.
I gather that some 25 people had been directly employed to the businesses destroyed in the Brunswick Avenue fire. Doubtless they have dependents. If we multiply 25 by four, we begin to gauge the real devastating impact.
Mayor Scott reacts to the hugely destructive fire almost in the vein of a Pontius Pilate.
We are desperately short of people who think laterally in key positions of responsibility in this country. A lateral thinker is a person who readily connects noumena/phenomena (things) from diverse sources. They typically see a higher purpose for learning and human development that many often fail to spot.
We also need far more people in key positions of responsibility who place less emphasis on strutting around like peacocks. We need far fewer people who spend the whole darn workday in meetings, with the only result being a plan for another and, thereafter, several meetings. Folks are demanding less rhetoric in exchange for more concrete results.
Sure, we have hard-working civil servants who go the extra mile and then some, but there are far more who shirk their responsibilities.
Tinder-dry frustrations, history has shown, usher governments in and out. I think, the country is burdened with an extremely expensive and inefficient political bureaucracy and civil service, which, all told, is not serving the needs of those on whose behalf they exist.
May God spare us from the curse of mediocrity which has held us back for so long.
DARYL VAZ
Accusing the other side of that which you are guilty is an age-old defence mechanism tool in politics. The systematic denting of the image of one’s political opponent is as old as politics itself.
I think that, except for former prime minister the late Edward Seaga, Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister Daryl Vaz is perhaps the most demonised local politician in the last 40 years.
Vaz has been put through the political wringer over and over. Members of his family have been subjected to nasty and calculated attacks for more years than they might care to remember.
I don’t think those who hatched viperous plots against
Vaz genuinely thought they were ever going to dethrone and destroy him politically. Their aim, I suspect, was to sour public sentiment, smear him, and hope that a question sign, a permanent one, would be imprinted in the minds of especially ordinary Jamaicans. The schemers wanted the name Daryl Vaz to be synonymous with a dark cloud.
I think they have failed miserably.
I have had reason to criticise Vaz in this space. And, no doubt, I will do so again if the situation warrants. I don’t for a moment think he is a perfect human being. None of us are perfect. We all have foibles. We all wear a mortal coil. I think history will be much kinder to Daryl Vaz than many of those, maybe all of those, who have dedicated their best years to his political ruination.