Corruption yes, but Jamaica nice
CHUPSKI AND I kept our annoyance subdued as we drove through the hills via Havendale, Cherry Gardens, Jacks Hill and Barbican. Seated in the back was an Airbnb visitor paying US$15 per night for a cool (fan in room) comfortable room in Havendale, but gnawingly insisting that Jamaica was expensive.
A few months ago, one of my very wealthy friends arranged a weekend for me and the lady at a resort in Ocho Rios. That was J$72,000 per night. The Airbnb guest should try that some time if she wanted to know what ‘expensive’ was. That said, we drove her through the hills to present her with a brief education, to expose her to most sides of us.
As we drove through Jacks Hill and she saw the mansions, the rolling and rising, immaculately manicured lawns and the breathlessly beautiful view of parts of the city below stretching all the way to the blue Caribbean, the oohs and aahs escaped her lips with vocal abandon.
“This represents those making up the top of the middle class and some among the comfortably wealthy,” I said.
“The societal ideal is to grow this sector faster than the rate at which our country creates traps to keep the poor locked in perpetual poverty,” I added.
After that we exposed her to other sides, sections of August Town and the laid-back Gordon Town.
“In governance issues, corruption and waste are our greatest scourges, riding high up there with a high rate of gun crimes,” I said. “The sad thing is, our people see governmental corruption through political lenses, and at the heart of this social complexity is an admiration if not love for rogues.”
THE ANANSI IN US
The preacher who trades the name of God for a few hot cars and a cool and cosy swanky hill mansion: the politician who entered poor and, having got super rich finds it hard to leave: the inner-city don with his gun and his bravado – it’s the Anansi in us.
Just recently, December 14, The Guardian carried a story, ‘Brazil charges former Trafigura executives with corruption. Bribes of more than $1.5m were allegedly paid to help secure more favourable oil trading’.
Brings back memories of that time in late 2006 when the governing People’s National Party (PNP) under the leadership of Portia Simpson Miller found itself in a $31-million pickle. Trafigura had presented the PNP (or some inside it) with a $31-million ‘gift’ or a ‘contribution’ or the vaguely described funds relating to a ‘commercial transaction’, while that party was running the governmental administration doing oil business with Trafigura on behalf of the Jamaica people.
With all of what has happened since in governmental corruption, including the present debacle of Petrojam, would it not have been the ideal had the PNP allowed key people in the party to have faced off in a court of law instead of fighting tooth and nail to nullify further investigation?
Imagine how it could have been had the PNP been cleared in a court of law. Imagine the stamp of credibility that such absolution would give to the opposition PNP as it rightly rips the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration over the Petrojam scandal. The PNP could claim that it represents transparency in action and the JLP would have had to accept its licks and retreat to a sad, quiet place.
Yesterday, I listened to a man in a bar telling me about his perilous times in prison while insisting that overall it did him good: “Me prefer fi love people now. Jamaica too nice fi kill people. Mark, mi a buy you a beer.”