A great deal of attention has been paid in recent days to Prime Minister Bruce Golding's pronouncements about the preferred composition of his Cabinet and also to his stating that the Government was not responsible for developing a crime-fighting plan, as that was the preserve of the police. Another statement of some significance may just have slipped under the national radar, however, not least of all because it is a statement of the obvious.

Still, even as a rehashing, it is important, as it is a current admission of a pervasive problem from the very highest level of the current administration.

It was reported that speaking to more than 100 delegates at the Regional Local Government Consultation and Conference in Montego Bay, St James, on Thursday, Mr Golding said, "we pursue a practice of politics that places far too much emphasis on the distributive element of political representation".

He was not, of course, speaking just about the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) nor, we dare say, the People's National Party (PNP), but also a significant proportion of the population. For if there are no hands stretched to receive then there can be none to give and, at the same time, slip on the shackles of patronage. Of course, it was reported that Golding "admitted that the history of the country's politics instils negative perceptions, where politicians inculcate the notion that the business of politics is to go out and vote for them because of what they can give".

Negative perception

We submit that this 'negative perception' of being rewarded for nothing else but rabid loyalty and no real productive effort has long spread beyond the immediate connection between putting an 'X' beside a party symbol on a ballot to other spheres of national life. That is the foundation upon which 'donship' is built; that is the notion that supports the perpetually outstretched hand of the omnipresent beggars; that is the notion that pulls persons into every get-rich-quick scheme which comes along and then demand 'justice'.

These are not, of course, the various visages of a Hydra-like beast of political patronage, but the 'negative perceptions' that have been instilled must have a wider impact.

Some years ago, there was much ado about a televised seminar titled 'The Politics of Crime' in which, ironically enough, Golding participated as leader of the National Democratic Movement, along with P.J. Patterson and Edward Seaga in their then roles as prime minister and leader of the opposition.

The discussion, in which they fielded questions from prominent journalists, was in the end about nothing, but Golding's statement is an admission about a crime of another sort, the crime of handouts which have at the very best fostered expectations of financial rewards for nothing.

As we recoil from the horror of the present crime wave, we need to look at this politics of disproportionate distribution. For really, people should eat bread, drive a Corolla, buy a DVD player and buy an aeroplane ticket by the sweat of their brow. There should be a world of difference between state welfare for the indigent and those who have come to live by the 'let-off' mentality. To encourage the latter, is, metaphorically speaking, a crime.

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