Except for a handful of institutions and a few individuals, Jamaica's civil-society and private-sector leadership has, for too long, been accommodating of incompetent management of the country's affairs.

If our nation is to be rescued from its long and worsening economic and social crises, that will have to change. Private-sector institutions and leaders must find their voice, assert their influence and demand an environment that is conducive to growth and prosperity. Civic leadership must help liberate Government from its entrapments by outmoded economic policies which are supposedly good for the poor, but which really keep Jamaica in poverty.

This will require the willingness of business/civic leaders to identify weak political leadership, bad public-sector management, and to offer the private sector's skill, insights and support to an often well-meaning, but mostly inefficient bureaucracy.

Corruption unacceptable

Politicians and bureaucrats, in this regard, must be told that corruption is just not acceptable in any form, and that our untrust-worthy police force and creaky justice systems have to be fixed. They must know, too, that civil society, broadly, but more specifically the private sector, will not tolerate the relationship, residual or otherwise, between political parties and community enforcers, which perpetuates garrison politics.

At the same time, the private sector must insist on a rebalanced economic environment. Undue tilt needs shifting in favour of margin gatherers to an even keel where real sectors, with a capacity to create jobs, can find a sustainable space.

Flexibility in fiscal reform

Economic reform must also include greater flexibility on the part of firms to reorganise, including making positions redundant, without risking staff's existence, which is now often the case.

Existing laws require companies to meet the high cost of severance, especially when stressed firms can least afford to pay.

It is sort of like the private sector flip side to the near, if not absolute, security of tenure enjoyed by civil servants.

The private sector is not without history of leading change. It certainly has the leverage to demand it.

In the 1970s, a period of deep ideological schism, many Jamai-cans feared for their democratic freedoms. The late Carlton Alexander, CEO of Grace-Kennedy, and others, spoke out forcefully. In the process, they created the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica as an effective counterbalance to government policy. They helped win the ideological battle of the day.

With appropriate mobilisation and support, a similar victory is possible over today's decidedly different, and perhaps even more profound, problems.