Howard L. Hamilton, Contributor
I'VE BEEN travelling again and I find myself reflecting, as I visit some of the Caribbean islands to the south, on how Jamaica seems to have been overtaken in so many ways by islands upon which we once heaped scorn because of their size and level of development.
Horse racing is what's been taking me to some of these places, and I must admit that, despite the advantage we have of size and length of time in the business, Jamaica has lagged behind like a lame nag in the race to develop the best and most sophisticated horseracing industry in the region. Jamaica has over 1,000 horses in training today. We have 93 race days on our calendar, and we generate some J$5 billion per year in turnover. Depending on the large variety of factors that influence our exchange rate, that could be anywhere between US$75 million and US$83 million.
In Trinidad and Tobago, there are just 200 horses in training for the 36 race days on that country's calendar. The industry there generates about TT$12 million turnover per year, barely US$2 million.
In Barbados there are only 100 horses in training for the 20 race days they have on their calendar. Their industry produces a turnover of less than a million US dollars in value.
Yet in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, the racing authorities have ample resources at their disposal to meet obligations, undertake repairs and improvements, and upgrade their operations to a level of refined sophistication worthy of the so-called Sport of Kings. Here in Jamaica, by stark contrast, the Government owned race track and its operations are drained of virtually every cent they produce.
HEAVILY TAXED
Proportionately little is rolled back into the upgrading and development of the facility and racing is so heavily taxed that all the better breeders and owners who once gave the industry its glamour and lustre have moved on to better and more productive areas of investment and entertainment.
I have come to view this as a metaphor for what pertains in today's Jamaica.
In 1954 I wrote a school essay on the topic Why Jamaica Should not Join the West Indies Federation. At the time, even to a schoolboy who was far more interested in girls than regional politics, the idea seemed ludicrous, as it proved to seem to the majority of Jamaicans at the time.
Today a great many of the people who voted against the Federation have passed away to spend eternity reflecting on their folly. I am confident that if a referendum were to take place in Jamaica today on the subject, the vote would be in favour of Federation.
Why? Because increasingly Jamaicans are coming to the conclusion that we have exhausted every reasonable option for political direction for little gain. More and more of our people consider themselves to have been badly served by the posturing and, as the Trinis would put it, "grand charging" that have so characterised Jamaican politics in the decades since Independence. And, as we look ruefully to our brothers and sisters in the south to come to the rescue of our industrial and financial sectors, we wonder wistfully how much better life could have been for us had we been able to draw on the pool of leadership that has so enriched the fortunes of those smaller states.
It now seems ironic that global developments are driving the region toward federations of various kinds and that in the race of Caribbean politics, Jamaica has become the lagging horse bedevilled by social maladies, economic anaemia and failing vision. Change jockeys as we may it seems that we have lost our wind.
It took a lot for me to admit these feelings of embarrassment, even to myself. I put them aside when I visited countries outside of the region, substituting for them many of the old excuses and "cop-outs" upon which we have all fallen to forgive ourselves of our lapses as a nation.
SOCIAL DECAY
When it came to crime, for example, I'd offer social decay, poverty and its various disadvantages, lack of Government resources, etcetera, as excuses. Yet, I would visit New York city and witness the impact of political leadership that, in a time when the national economy is performing lamely and the city's budgetary resources are weaker and under more stress than they have ever been, is able to reduce crime to the lowest its been in 40 years!
In visiting Singapore and looking with awe at the transformation that firm leadership and clear-eyed vision can produce, it stunned me to recall that at the time of Jamaica's independence we were regarded as being at a more advanced stage of development than Singapore.
Of course, at that time while Singapore's leadership aggressively promoted population control concurrently with massive investment in education and human resource development, Jamaicans were concerned that "birth control is a plot to kill off black people". And in addition, we were negligent in investing in human capital to the extent that significant proportions of our population remain illiterate even to this day.
As they say, "you write your own ticket". For us in Jamaica, the chickens are coming home to roost. In Montego Bay, where for decades Government has capitulated in the face of brazen land grabbing by the 'small man', it now finds itself unable to maintain law and order.
In Kingston, where citizens have offered protection and succour to criminals and 'area dons' in exchange for small and false security, entire neighbourhoods are now being abandoned to warring gangs.
And so it goes, while we celebrate the fact that our stock exchange has recorded record trading, thanks to the performance of Trinidad and Tobago's economy. What irony! How sad.
