THE EDITOR, Sir:

Being an experienced politician, Portia Simpson Miller has mastered the art of rhetoric. However, it would not have surprised me if leaders from Africa and the Caribbean found her recent speech to the United Nations amusing.

Mrs Simpson Miller is a socialist, like her mentor Michael Manley, who was of the view that the world economic system needed to be reformed in order to facilitate the development of the Third World.

This view found favour with socialist leaders of the 1970s. Unfortunately, the North-South Dialogues of that era never achieved much, and Jamaica, like many other developing nations at the time, became a victim of the International Monetary Fund's neoliberal policies.

Further, because of the Eurozone crisis, Europe is becoming more inward-looking. Therefore, by 2013, upper middle-income countries in the Caribbean and Africa, with the exception of Haiti, will no longer be able to benefit from international aid.

begging scandal

Mrs Simpson Miller in a recent speech made it clear that this decision will have a debilitating effect on the economies of upper middle-income countries like Jamaica. The prime minister of Jamaica was praised by leaders of the developing world, because she begged passionately on their behalf. This is nothing short of a scandal.

The Caribbean and Africa, with the exception of a few countries such as Barbados and Botswana, have failed to develop sustainable economies. It must also be noted that although Taiwan depended on foreign aid highly in the '50s, today the nation has the 19th-largest economy in the world.

Asians have been affected by European colonisation, but unlike blacks, they do not have a warped sense of entitlement. Mrs Simpson Miller's speech has confirmed the popularly held view that "blacks are the white man's burden".

LIPTON MATTHEWS

lo_matthews@yahoo.com