Fulfilling Norman Manley’s vision
I want to pause here a bit because there is a sense in the country that we mustn’t spend anything on government. There is a sense that if you are going to invest in making the symbols of government reflective of the hopes, dreams, ambitions, aspirations of the people, that you are wasting money because there is this great distrust of the State, and indeed a separation of the State from the people.
Investing in a Parliament [building] is not wasting the people’s money. It is because we have not, as a country, made the investments in the symbols of our sovereignty why we have the fundamental issues with respect for the rule of law and fairness and dignity of the State, and until we break that and show that the Jamaican State is not a kleptocracy, enriching itself for a certain class or sector of the society, but is making an investment for everyone to be able to access and benefit from it, then we will continue as we are.
I, as your prime minister, don’t want to leave Jamaica the way I found it. And I know that none of you in this audience want to leave Jamaica the way you found it.
While I was minister of education, a large file was brought to me. I was flipping [through the files which] went back to somewhere in the 1950s. Norman Manley was then the premier and I saw some documents in that file which literally had a plan.
The idea was that the Parliament would be here, at Race Course, now Heroes Park, not my idea, this was what Norman Manley had in mind. He had some ideas as well for King’s House lands. Not going into that right now.
So you can understand that having read this and seen that there was someone else who had a vision. But what happened after 50 years, we are still having a dream, we have to wake up now and get something done.
We are going to build this Parliament and we are going to do it the right way. We are going to take all concerns on board, all suggestions, it is going to be bipartisan, multi-sectoral and it will be done in the best interest of all the people of Jamaica.
In November 2003, the Oliver Clarkechaired parliamentary salaries committee presented its report which recommended higher salaries, but among other things that a new parliamentary building be constructed to allow for parliamentarians to perform their work efficiently.
The committee was of the view that the legislature cannot continue to carry out its work within the limited and inadequate space of the existing Parliament building. That was almost 15 years ago. We cannot delay any longer, we have a real opportunity to make Jamaica what it should be, and so we need to work together today to create the Jamaica we all want to see for the future.