Delroy ChuckFOR THE past five years, I have made occasional visits to Grand Cayman to play tennis in a weekend club tournament. Each time I go, the reverberating question in the minds of my friends and myself is just where has Jamaica gone wrong? In virtually every respect, Jamaica is on the wrong track, heading south, decaying and drifting mindlessly apart. Other countries, like the Cayman Islands, much worse off than Jamaica twenty or thirty years ago, are heading north, prospering, progressing and improving the quality of life for their people. What path have they taken that we have missed or failed to take?
The Cayman Islands were a dependency of Jamaica and in the early seventies, it was an underdeveloped, backward and miserable place to live. They used Jamaican currency, shopped and sought medical and other services in Jamaica and elsewhere. Then, Jamaica did them a favour. The short-sighted socialist government of the seventies believed the Cayman Islands were the source of foreign exchange leakage and demanded they got their own dollars. The Cayman Islands created their own currency board and converted their Jamaican dollars to CI dollars, with an exchange rate to the US dollar of CI0.80; that remains the same rate 25 years later, while, in the meantime, the Jamaican dollar heads for a value of two cents US and possibly lower.
The Cayman Islands, with a native population of twenty five thousand, an expatriate population of thirty five thousand, and tens of thousands of visitors daily, is a booming outpost of the British Empire. Nowadays, it has developed so orderly, immaculately and well, that visitors could easily believe they are in the suburb of any rich and wealthy North American city. Construction is booming and interestingly many of the construction workers are from Jamaica. The tourist trade will soon outperform Jamaica; it already attracts over 1 million visitors annually and twenty-odd cruise lines weekly, and expanding. On any measure, their quality of life is eight or ten times better than Jamaica. They have very little crime; in fact, people are accustomed to leaving their cars and houses open and burglar bars are a rare sight.
The Cayman Islands are not exceptional. Barbados, Bermuda, Bahamas, Singapore, the desert city of Las Vegas, and so on, would have seen Jamaica, in the late sixties and early seventies, as a model of development, yet thirty years on, we have been left far behind. In truth, none of these countries have had to contend with a charismatic leader like Michael Manley or have had to endure the poisonous political medicine of socialism. They have made progress, and got things right, despite any natural resources, local capital or, for that matter, constitutional rearrangement.
The question of where have we gone wrong will find many answers, explanations and excuses. Yet, if there is one single underlying thread that can be easily discerned in countries that have failed and it is in the bankruptcy of their political leadership. I strongly believe that the political culture of hatred, conflicts, envy, dependency and corruption we have fostered during the past thirty years is largely responsible for the dire straits in which we now wallow.
We can trace our decline to our strong love affair with socialism in the seventies and its remnants in the nineties, as we tried to operate a command economy in the well-intentioned search for social and economic justice. We mistakenly believe we can help the poor by handouts, self-start and sharing the largesse of the rich and wealthy. We attack capital and the owners of capital as the bane and curse of the poor and of labour. Yet, if we are to succeed, we cannot do it without capital and those, call them capitalists if you may, who know how to increase and multiply capital. That is the lesson we need to learn and the path we need to take.
To be sure, Jamaica is wealthy and there is no doubt that if the wealth was properly distributed we could all live well. Amazingly, that is where we have gone wrong. We have tried to redistribute wealth but end up distributing poverty. Our socialist governments have misguidedly believed that their mission is to transfer and redistribute the wealth of the nation and of nations, and have engaged in a variety of bankrupt and corrupt policies that have caused only misery, hardship and poverty.
We need to change the mindsets of our political leaders or, if that is not possible, change them. If we are to turn and find the path to peace, progress and prosperity, then it is time to recognise that the genuinely rich and wealthy, whether local or foreign, are the creators of wealth and should not be envied and hated but should be emulated, attracted and encouraged to come and/or remain on our shores.
Cayman is peaceful and prosperous, as it has become a haven for the rich and wealthy; and to the best of my knowledge it is not drugs or dirty money, but money that is seeking a safe and secure resting place. Many rich Jamaicans keep their money there. Ordinary Jamaicans live, work and prosper in the Cayman as no one envies them for their hard work and wealth earned. In Jamaica, the rich and wealthy are seen as people who have prospered illegitimately and at the expense of their workers, partners and the nation. In fact, our government policies have always sought to soak the rich, but invariably end up soaking the poor, as the rich and wealthy have always been able to avoid attempts to take away or share their wealth.
What our political leaders have yet to learn is how to harness the capital, the creativity, entrepreneurial energy and development dynamism of capitalist-minded individuals to help the nation. That can only be done if we look to the capitalists as people who are intent to make more money on their money and are only willing to do it in an environment that makes their money safe and secure.
It is in the creation of more wealth that the poor and the rest of the nation can, and will, benefit and it is time we stop believing that we have enough wealth and start understanding that the ultimate political goal must be how to create more wealth to improve the lives of our people. If we fail to do so, then we will be left even further behind and will continue to see the Cayman Islands - and other countries with similar history as ours - as examples of what we could have been, if only we had chosen the right path.
Delroy Chuck is an attorney-at-law and Opposition Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by e-mail at delchuck@hotmail.com.
