Whipped into submission
published: Saturday | July 29, 2006

The Editor, Sir:

It is frightfully appalling to witness scandal after scandal, the results of systemic corruption at the highest levels, being exposed in a nation that prides itself on being politically sophisticated.

As each week brings a new unveiling, this nation has meekly accepted injury after injury and insult upon insult, inflicted upon it by an administration lost in its own hubris and clearly filled with contempt for the people they should serve.

Jamaicans must either have an extremely low sense of national pride, or have handed their sovereignty on a platter to the Government to do with it as they will. In even the most backward, uncivilised societies of yore, a succession of scandals such as those unmasked so frequently here, would provoke the citizens to call for Government to act or relinquish power. Instead, we play the talk show circuit, expecting the host to do for us what we should do for ourselves.

Like many a neglected and abused child, who has been whipped too many times and witnessed too much violence, the nation has retreated in fear, too traumatised to realise there is a way out.

I am, etc.,

KADENE PORTER

kadene26@hotmail.com

Woodland Hills, FL

Via Go-Jamaica