Don Robotham, ContributorOMAR DAVIES is in deep trouble. His pronouncements at the North St. Andrew conference of the PNP have been rightly condemned on all sides. What is striking here is not the hypocritical denunciations emanating from the Opposition to which nobody pays the slightest attention. Likewise for the mocking and savage attacks from the usual quarters in the media, baying for a sip of Davies' blood. Far more important is the deep sense of disappointment and dismay felt by the many persons who respect the Minister of Finance. I am one of those persons.
With characteristic braggadocio, Omar proclaimed to the entire nation what had been long apparent. This is the fact that the current budget deficit of 8.4 per cent of GDP which has caused our credit rating to be downgraded, produced turmoil in the foreign exchange markets, led to a panic hike in interest rates and to weeks of social unrest with many more to come, was no policy error. On the contrary, it was a calculated piece of political opportunism. Dr. Davies could be heard on the radio programme, 'Nation-wide', demagogically proclaiming to the PNP faithful that he knowingly pursued a course leading to the deficit, in order to ensure that the PNP won the general election. This is political brazenness taken to a new level.
Many are anxious to find some way of defending Omar, myself included. But there can be no defence. Consider his own arguments. What Dr. Davies said is that such political opportunism is normal in political life in every country in the world. Only the self-righteous, the naive and the hypocritical imagine that politics is ever otherwise. Indeed, this by definition is what politics is - a profession of opportunism practised on a public scale. The only mistake that he has made is to state the obvious and not to hypocritically shy away from what all practitioners and students of politics know to be the real case: politics by its very nature is a dirty business. Omar prides himself on his frankness.
All of this is absolutely true. One would not have much difficulty in finding identical acts of barefaced opportunism in either British or American electoral politics. It has occurred over and over again in France, Italy and Germany not to mention practically every country in Latin America and we can be sure it will occur again. Nor would there be the slightest problem in finding hard-headed academic justifications for this 'realistic' notion of politics as by its very nature an amoral field. The entire academic life of the notorious German political theorist - Carl Scmitt - was devoted to substantiating the amoral notion of politics as a no-holds barred struggle to the finish between 'friend and foe'.
But this is hardly a defence. The fact that crookedness is widespread does not alter the fact that crookedness is crookedness. Practising crook-edness in the political field does not make it any less crooked. Indeed, it makes it more. This is because the impact of political crookedness is on a larger scale - affecting millions of people and the life of an entire nation.
Moreover, this argument misses the entire point about our situation in Jamaica. We are not in a 'normal' situation. We are in a profound social, economic and political crisis. Criminality besets us. Our homicide rate is among the highest in the world. Our international prestige is at an all-time low, as nation after nation seeks to protect itself from Jamaican criminality spilling over unto its shores. Coarseness and vulgarity have reached an unprecedented height in our public culture at every single level of society. A deep moral crisis and dis-respect for authority in almost every sphere of social life is the common experience. In our schools, teachers are fighting a losing battle against invasions by vendors and against the widespread practice of older boys extorting lunch money from younger ones. We have a deep and intract-able problem of a lack of leadership. Demoralisation and alienation is all-pervasive in Jamaica. A minority voted in the last general election. I doubt that the turnout for the coming local government elections will reach 20 per cent. If this is not a crisis then the word has no meaning.
In Jamaican today we cannot therefore afford to practice 'normal' politics. We cannot afford to wink at a little opportunism here and a little demagoguery there. We are in a desperate fight for the very survival of Jamaican society as a viable entity. In such a context we desperately need leadership which can rise to the extremely serious challenges facing us as a nation. Dr. Davies has shown not only that he cannot provide this leadership. He does not even understand what such leadership is!
This is the shocking part of this affair. It is not at all that people are taking a self-righteous position and demanding from Omar and other Jamaican politicians a standard of ethics which we do not apply to ourselves. It is something else. It is that, despite all the anti-Davies noise in the past, there was at the same time deep public respect for Omar as a person of unshakeable principle. Even the Willie Haggart affair did not dent this public perception. Aggressive and arrogant yes, but without doubt a politician of principle. Associated with all sorts of financial impositions but never before associated with political opportunism.
Now, hundreds of thousands have heard the Finance Minister proclaiming in the coarsest possible terms that he deliberately did not stop expenditures on highway construction and other projects, because this may have caused the JLP to win the elections. He deliberately created the budget deficit. What a disappointment!
This is the man who held firm against a profligate Cabinet and a fractious society, taming the massive inflation of 1991, bringing it down to single digit figures for the first time in my adult life. This is the man who practically single-handedly restored our credit rating on the international scene and won universal admiration in high quarters for his steadfastness in managing the Jamaican economy. He may not have been loved at home and abroad but he was certainly respected. Now all this is endangered. Bruce Golding may well be right. Maybe the strain of the job has simply proved too much in the end, even for a person of such steadfastness.
But the issue goes beyond disappointment. For Dr. Davies' actions and speech raise in a most brutal form the essential question facing Jamaican society today. This is the fact that the root of our malaise is not simply economic, social or even political. It is all these and much more. We face a deep and broad dissolution of morality. It is this loss of morality which expresses itself in crime as well as in police brutality. People simply have no idea what it means to observe the rule of law, except of course when their own interests are at stake. Then we are vociferous in asserting our rights.
It expresses itself in the shallowness of our politics. It expresses itself in the mayhem in our schools or at public events at the national stadium or other entertainment venues. It also expresses itself as an absence of leadership in almost every sphere of public life. It is this amorality which is behind the coarsening of public culture and the general indiscipline in the society. It is also the source of the vulgar consumerism and name-brand mania - hoping in vain to cover up the emptiness inside with a garish and noisy outside. The inner sense of right and wrong remains but has become extremely weak. It is so in politics and it is just as vacuous among those who claim to be religious - their extravagant personal lifestyle and public posturing cannot hide their moral irrelevance.
In such a context, we have a right to expect that our leaders should stand against this dreadful tide, not to be themselves swept up in it and indeed, cheering it on. But sadly, this is indeed what the Minister of Finance has done.
Where then does this leave us? To what and whom can we now turn? The Davies affair proves that the rot in our society is much deeper than we may have thought. The challenge we face is much greater. We have to try to reconstruct the very moral foundations of the society. Not by precept but by example.
