Hartley Neita, Contributor

Hugh Shearer's tenure as prime minister of Jamaica saw the country attaining its highest-ever gross domestic product per capita, US$2,300, based on rapid growth in agriculture, mining and tourism.

This is one of the credits given to this flamboyant prime minister by economist/author and current Jamaican ambassador to the United States, Anthony Johnson.

School programme

Johnson also credits him for making the great breakthrough in education with the construction of 100 new primary schools, courtesy of the Canadian International Development Agency.

In the first loan to education by the World Bank in the western hemisphere, 60 junior secondary schools were built, and this development programme gave Jamaica the distinction of being one of the first non-European countries to have 100 per cent capacity for all children of primary-school age, and provided secondary places for over 70 per cent.

Johnson noted that this was one of his dreams since, in his youth, less than five per cent of children in Jamaica had access to secondary schooling, and education was used as a means of social and economic discrimination.

In actuality, of course, these loans had been negotiated by Shearer's predecessor, Donald Sangster, but was implemented by Shearer.

Replacing British honours

To me, however, Shearer's greatest contribution to our national development was in his decision to end the award of British honours to Jamaican citizens and replace them with Jamaican national honours.

Before this was done, Jamaicans were honoured by the kings and queens of England with knighthoods (which had no relevance to Jamaica) and other awards twice each year.

These were known as His/Her New Year Honours and His/Her Birthday Honours. These honours were bestowed right through the first seven years of our Independence.

On his first day in office as prime minister, Shearer met with his two permanent secretaries, Jimmy Lloyd (Ministry of External Affairs) and Barker McFarlane (prime minister, defence and Cabinet secretary), and informed them of his wish that Jamaican national honours should be introduced to replace the British honours.

These latter honours included some named for the British Empire and two British Saints - Michael and George). They had absolutely no relevance to Jamaica, he pointed out.

The permanent secretaries knocked heads together, and consulted with their colleagues in the civil service. In due course, Shearer was able to present to Parliament a slate of Jamaican national honours: National Heroes, Order of Jamaica, and Order of Distinction (commander and officer classes).

Service to Jamaica, not service to Britain was to be the basis for these honours.

The only remnant of the British honours which remained was the knighthood for the governor general and, for a while during the 1970s, this was abandoned.

Sadly, this is back on the national agenda and will only be got rid of when we change this office to that of a president.

Bungling with awards

There is, I believe, something very special about these national honours. There should be no question in the public's mind about the merits of any award and, on the whole, they have stood up to the test of public opinion.

However, there seems to have been some amount of bungling in the decision about the awards given to our Beijing heroes and heroines. Questions have been raised about who got what and why. For example, the omission of coach Stephen Francis was unforgivable.

This is being written before Thursday's celebration in Trelawny is held and I wait with bated breath to see what amends and explanations, if any, are made.

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