About ‘confidenting’ good somebody
“I SAW how that man disrespected my mother. He broke up our family and went off flashing his d**k wherever he pleased. I probably have sisters and brothers who I don’t even know. I will never trust a man the way that she did.” Her anger turned into a pout of distress. Now over 40, carnivalled-out , victim of as many try-out relationships as she cursed her father for; facing loneliness despite all the trappings of career success. Her inheritance is an inability to trust.
Trust is the glue that sustains relationships. Not law or coercion first and foremost. Trust. When a Jamaican says that he or she “confident you”, it is a supreme complement, business can be done even love and sacrifice can follow.
BUILDING BLOCKS
Trusting relationships are the building blocks of a society. When they are weak, self-interest prevails, differences are magnified, conflict becomes likely. Haiti happens, Gaza is destroyed. Jamaicans refuse to cooperate despite clear crisis or longanticipated opportunity. Finally, Andrew says the government will meet the Opposition to treat with crime and violence. Finally!
We are a low-trust society. That’s why we can’t have inclusive growth and why so many are giving up on the land of their birth. When a Prime Minister pleads with us to “confident him” that prosperity is on its way, the majority don’t believe him. Disappointment in being let down time after time erodes credibility like cancer ravages the body. A cure is hard to come by.
DISRESPECT
Distrust leads i nevitably to disrespect. As has been evident for a long time and most recently last week, we operate a political culture premised on sowing and displaying mistrust. We have infected ourselves with the strategy of Willie Lynch in slavery times. Divide and control. When our leaders are at each others throats, true believers follow suit, the rest exclude themselves, disinterested at least, disgusted more likely.
CREDIBILITY AND HUMILITY
The expensive glossy ads, repeated so often as to become irrelevant, telling us how easy it is becoming to do business in Jamaica, do not square with the citizen’s experience. Failure to keep promises, to match announcement with reality, are the surest ways to squander trust. The petulant disagreements surrounding the Budget debate are going to seep into a long election campaign to the further detriment of public trust. Add to that the fuel of scurrilous social media which has become the bible for many.
We need the humility to listen to each other and to respect and acknowledge t he ideas and contributions of others. For example, the i dea of a long term savings program for disadvantaged young people to attend university was the original thought of former Senator Basil Waite. A building block of political comity would have been created if this were acknowledged by the Prime Minister and t he cooperation and participation of the ideator secured.
Similarly the plan to use HEART resources to rescue and retrain a mere 1,900 of the more than 200,000 unattached youth appears not to take into account the irrefutable assertion put forward by Don Robotham a week ago in these pages, that illiteracy and low literacy are the inescapable impediments to upskilling. Trust and enthusiasm to participate are sapped when the so-called gamechangers have clearly not been thought out thoroughly.
When a House Speaker has gained the trust of members and the public for impartiality and firm good humour, his or her gender and spousal relations are of little moment. When the Head of Government, chronically, can’t present his financial affairs in the manner prescribed by the laws of which he is the principal custodian, what does that do to public trust? Talk to the “choppers” and they will tell you!
When the respected Statistical Institute which we “confident” for vital data, obfuscates about the scandalously incomplete $4 billion census and when the Constitutional Reform process “tek bush” instead of continuously listening to the people, trust is forfeited.
Whichever party wins the next general election will have to cope with the justifiable scepticism, indeed scorn, of the Jamaican majority in the face of our leaders giving themselves a raise of nearly 200 per cent while dashing out the bitter gall of a mere 15 per cent increase on the hopelessly “mawga” minimum wage which most of us earn. They have neither respect for us nor shame about themselves.
ABOUT DIANE
The British-Jamaican MP Diane Abbott is one who has never shaken the Jamaican dust off her feet. She has been the strength and stay of Caribbean and other black people in the English Parliament for decades. Recently her dignity and her life have been threatened by a white Conservative moneyman whose business, it is reported, we, Diane’s Jamaican sisters and brothers are now paying big money to implement the National Medical Records System. The Ministry of Health must cancel that contract now. Years ago we vindicated our consciences by refusing to trade with apartheid South Africa. Government, stop draw “bad card”!
THE NEW WAY
For most Christian communions, this is Holy Week when we remember the absolute vulnerability and total gift of the Man Jesus who, by suffering death for defending righteousness , showed himself to be the Son of God, worthy of all trust. Wise persons “confident” Him. His Good News teaches us that building loving, trusting relationships – not contemptuous walk-outs and bloviated self-recommendations – is the only legitimate expression of power, secular or ecclesiastical. So integral and fruitful is His Way, that those who follow Him and recognize Him in themselves, will transcend the ultimate terror of autocrats and guineagogs – their own death. May the way of the Cross leading to the truth of the Empty Tomb inspire us to His New Way. Happy Easter!