I AM A great believer in organised mass demonstrations myself. When a thousand Jamaicans can gather in a common cause, this is a major public achievement.
Jamaicans are not by nature joiners of bodies and groups. We love status and prestige positions, so that small committees that we can chair prominently are more our speed.
Only a few hundred rank-and-file people, it seems, can ever agree on anything at any time. But even these people are somewhat embarrassing to the rest of society, which inevitably thinks they look and sound a bit like a cult, or a secret society.
Even now, amid the daily slaughter of the rich and poor alike, all the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) managed to muster at Emancipation Park was around 3,000 people.
Only 3,000 people managed to 'Stand for Jamaica' in Kingston. In Montego Bay, it was even less, but they went down on their knees in Sam Sharpe Square. They are as amazing to me as a three-legged goat.
SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION
This is out of a population of nearly three million, most of whom across the length and breadth of the island had the afternoon off for the purpose. Even though the PSOJ, therefore, effectively rented a crowd, it did not turn up.
From the looks of the rank and file
present, they missed a great afternoon. But the private sector leadership themselves have sown the seeds of their own further destruction.
They have announced the establishment of a fund to buy equipment and repair stations for the police. The first contributor was GraceKennedy's.
It may well be that this new fund will turn out like the one for Hurricane Ivan restoration more promises than cash. Nevertheless, the whole concept is utterly wrong.
In addition to paying extortion money to criminal racketeers, the beleaguered business community is to find yet more money for yet another fund for social intervention. Bear in mind that they already pay taxes in the many billions of
dollars to the Government annually.
Yet the police are unable to ensure their safety, and on last Labour Day, the private sector was out along with other community members digging out blocked street drains, and painting schools and hospitals. They are not supposed to do that. That is the role of the Government. Labour Day ought not to exist so that citizens can take a day off to do the basic and elementary work of
government agencies which cannot bother.
This is as bad as the private sector designing new tax laws for the Government, so it can cherry-pick them
to impose the maximum pain with the
minimum relief. When a government is performing badly, the answer is not to form a surrogate government. That is impossible and illegal without the vote, and only makes a greater nonsense of everything.
If the private sector's strength of cash could float or guarantee good government, Jamaica would have reached the ranks of the First World in the last decade alone. Yet despite steeply growing government
revenue, the island slides into the deep.
The cause of this is the Jamaican Government trying to operate like a commercial entity. It enters into large-scale commercial projects like up-scale housing schemes,
call centres and tourism resort developments, and loses hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars of taxpayers' money.
The Government imposes billion-dollar cesses annually on some businesses, so it can go off and itself invest the money in related fields of activity. The money is sure to be wasted there, too.
As a result, public markets cannot be cleaned, nor water maintained in the hydrants for the fire engines. The Patterson administration has usurped the role of
the private sector, and abandoned its
constitutional duty to serve the needs of the majority of the people.
Their failure to do so, makes poor people vexed with rich people. The private sector, therefore, tries to deflect its anger by promising funds to relieve its misery and provide basic services because the Government will not.
UPSTAGING ONE ANOTHER
But these funds are guilt money when the private-sector is supposed to be blameless in the matter. And it plays right into the Prime Minister's hands, who promptly gave their rally a 'thumbs-up'.
Finance Minister, Dr. Omar Davies, a candidate for the presidency of the People's National Party (PNP), sat right behind Doreen Frankson, president of the Jamaica Manufacturers' Association. He was in pole position to do his collections, and get on national television. That ought to have been another sign that something was
fundamentally wrong. But nobody knows his place any more, nor pays the slightest
attention to his rightful roles.
This was a rally about the appalling level of violent crime, which is the responsibility of Security Minister Dr. Peter Phillips,
himself a PNP presidential candidate. One candidate ought not to look to benefit from the discomfiture of another, neither
nor ministerially. Some grace and team spirit is expected in an internal party race.
There was none in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), and look what has happened to that party. They have failed to close ranks around their new leader Bruce Golding. Several JLP MPs, their families, friends and funders have lined up to help Portia Simpson Miller become president of the PNP, all discreetly but all active.
This column believes that is a worthy cause, but it should not be their cause. It is even more insidious evidence of people not knowing their place.
I would like to see Mrs. Simpson Miller become Prime Minister, but I'm not a member of the JLP. It's perfectly permissible in my case, but not in theirs. The enthusiasm of JLP MPs for her is, therefore an entirely
different matter.
In the past, I've heard many traditional JLP private-sector funders wondering why she had not come to them for campaign funds. Over the past many years, they've tried without success to get her to join the JLP. It is the job of the private sector to fund either or both major political parties, all or one candidate. But it's not cricket for the players on the teams themselves to throw the match.
That again is a waste of the private
sector's money, money that is better spent expanding their businesses and generating employment for Jamaicans in Jamaica. What they lack is the political leadership that will let them do it.
