Egypt and Jamaica: The intersections between Hosni and Manatt

 Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist

Last week I took a sample of two and reported opinions held towards the Commission of Enquiry into the Dudus-Manatt-Golding mystery.

One was from my taxi driver who thought it was farce, essentially wasting money we can't afford, yet not looking into the most important question: 73 or more 'official' killings.

The other, my market vendor, figured accountant Clarke's killing was a "wicked ack". These two individuals conform to what we have in mind when we speak of ordinary Jamaicans.

The idea embodied in the words "ordinary Jamaican" refers to the majority of our population. The ordinary Jamaican does not possess a university degree but would have had at least primary schooling, is not a lawyer, doctor, business person or engineer, and certainly does not generally earn a middle-class income.

To jump from these characteristics, however, to the conclusion that "'im an har fool-fool" would be a more-than-fatal error.

I wanted to highlight the fact that ordinary Jamaicans are more than ordinarily intelligent. They form and hold strong opinions. Their opinions may not always swing, or rather turn, the way political party spinners seek to channel them.

Their opinions may derive from strong attachments to morality - a sense of right and wrong. This appears to be the case of my sample of two who, looking at the episode which involved attempts to delay or avoid extradition of Christopher 'Dudus' Coke and our prime minister's, attorney general's and attorney-at-law Harold Brady's efforts to achieve this outcome, think our Government has lost moral ground.

The fact is their labours came to nought - indeed much less than nought: actually 74 or more lives! Theirs was a futile, ineffectual and, as it turned out, lethal venture as hindsight demonstrates. It was in every respect ill-advised.

In the end, it cost a tremendous amount of unnecessary and avoidable loss of life and income for so many people. Wise, informed foresight would have convinced our prime minister that he was acting out an awfully unsound judgement, for which he has had to come to the Jamaican people indicating he misled us, seeking our forgiveness.

But how can I seek connections between this land of wood and water and that of the pyramids: Egypt? No, I'm not proposing physical, cultural or geo-morphologic similarities. I am proposing political, economic and governance similarities that actually exist below the surface.

Do you recall Hosni Mubarak's major plank of his need to stay in office? Stability. He argued that chaos would reign should he leave immediately. The US supported him and his regime for 30 years with the second-highest dollar amount of aid after Israel.

Indeed, the US has a history of support for dictatorial and other questionable regimes precisely because of the view that underdeveloped countries that are more 'democratic' may waste aid funds, because government must respond to poor peoples' demands and also these governments may not support US foreign-policy goals.

What was the concern driving decisions on the Dudus extradition? It was the feeling that stability would evaporate. An area leader of such significant influence and control in the prime minister's constituency, once he left, would mean chaos.

Yet, Mubarak has left and so has Dudus. Where is the much-feared instability? In the case of Jamaica, some suggest indeed, since limited 'war on Tivoli' the incidence of violent crime and murder has fallen.

Late pollster and political commentator Carl Stone worried that the garrison constituency phenomenon could become nationwide.

"The great fear here," he worried, "is that what started in garrison communities could easily be extended to the national level, in which we all become hostages to warlords and leaders using violence as an organising principle."

Jamaicans do not wish to see this happen. Events surrounding the Dudus-Manatt-Golding mystery have given us a preview of what could transpire. What a worrisome mirror into which we peer.

Protection racketeering, contracts for political associates of questionable character, contributions to political parties from those who would later extract significant financial benefit from deals with government, all these are aspects of a cancerous corruption that significantly reduces potential economic expansion.

Such corruption disrupts and distorts the playing field in the competition to earn a living from production and generally denies ordinary people the freedoms they desire.

Here, comparison with Egypt breaks down, the youthful population had enough. They initiated change of their government.

There is no such inkling in Jamaica, perhaps in great measure, because we converted our Westminster system of government into a classic 'winner take all' process. Those out of power think they know their turn for scarce benefits shall come.

Those in the governmental interface with the public also know their corruption racket is safe. So, too, do our garrison dons and the businesses that pay protection. To thrive on these arrangements, we assign differential values to the lives of different groups of Jamaicans - extraordinary and ordinary.

wilbe65@yahoo.com