Ronald Thwaites | More on morals

I contend that every economic and political decision, indeed even personal ones, involves a moral position. Always there is some view of person or community behind individual choice, national and foreign policy. When the unlamented Kissinger said that his country had no friends, only interests: when Trump, the slave owners, or the captain of the Zong spoke of and treated humans as animals, their moral bankruptcy was on show. Because Jesus, Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King suffered and forgave their torturers and murderers, their exalted sense of respect, rightness and goodness continue to enthuse us.

When the founders of the cooperative movement in Jamaica sought to provide an alternative to the loan sharks and usurers of history and the present, they were exhibiting a commitment to help those disadvantaged to succeed, despite the systemic Babylon of uber-capitalist financial arrangements.

When a political system, and even a constitutional order, elevates individual greed over an ethic of the common good, a healthy social order becomes impossible. When powerful people, even those chosen by voters, use their power to distort the public conscience, they become tyrants and oppressors.

Last week, this nation was confronted with the futility as well as the barbarity of the national security state towards which we are being led. Chief Justice Sykes almost laconically laid bare the ineffectiveness of the mandatory sentences and rolling states of emergency which constitute the totality of this Government’s anti-crime thrust.

LET’S BREAK IT DOWN

A high proportion of violent crimes are never reported. Little or no regard, nor more than cosmetic investment, is applied to the antecedent causes of crime. Our governors behave like Governor Eyre who never considered why the St Thomas peasants were restive. In place of thought, analysis and effort, they intensify brute force.

Criminal offenders have no more than a 50-50 risk of being arrested and charged. (Please don’t detain us with the contrivance of “ the cleared-up” rate). And of those arraigned before a competent court where evidence has to be adduced, tested and law applied, we learn that seven out of every 10 of the accused are acquitted.

This is scandalously high and gives the lie to all the propaganda about having adequate crime-controlling capacity. No wonder the states of emergency are so popular. If you can be detained without recourse, guilt or innocence become immaterial. El Salvador and the Gulag have arrived!

Has this state of affairs featured, let alone dominated, the minds of parliamentarians who have spent the year agonising about ways to lock up people and denying them bail so that incriminating evidence can be beaten, threatened or in frustration, coerced from them? What is the utilitarian or moral purpose of this masquerade of efficient crime fighting? Does it even bother those with the power of arrest or lawmaking that the recent NCU survey found that only two out of 10 Montegonians trust the police?

Poor socialisation spawns criminality. Weak administration neuters deterrence. We thrash around in our self-imposed futility and choose cruelty and retribution as default positions. Immorality describes the mindset of our rulers and Keith Clarke’s murder trial can’t start since 2010 and the murder years ago in the house on Barbican Road can’t solve.

WHAT VALUES DO WE HOLD?

This mental state was resplendent recently in one minister’s full-throated and lugubrious embrace of the Israeli holocaust being perpetuated in Palestine. Never mind that his opinion is in clear contradiction to his government’s balanced policy position, albeit after its embarrassing clumsiness at the United Nations. Or is he a stalking horse?

Scarily such evangelism in favour of disproportionate retribution is found squatting at the high table of national governance. Such a person does not value human life any more than the Hamas marauders of October 7 or the unhinged Netanyahu. Are there not standards of moral principle and balance which should be qualifying criteria for membership of the Executive. And, as with previous excrescences from other Cabinet members, there is likely to be no correction from the primus inter pares. It would have been different in Busta’s time though.

POSTSCRIPT ON EDUCATION

Wholesome morals and humane education are reinforcing bedfellows. The highly respected PISA education achievement results for 2022 record an unprecedented performance drop in basic subjects, partly because of COVID-19. The fall-off is worse in developing countries. In many societies, including ones like us, socially disadvantaged students (read 70 per cent of Jamaican students) are SEVEN times less likely than their more advantaged peers to achieve basic mathematics proficiency.

Some nations which ascribe to moral values of universal individual worth and the supreme principle of the common good are remedying learning loss and behavioural slippage by keeping schools open longer for more students needing to catch-up and investing substantially in building strong foundations for learning and well-being for all students.

In our context, as Dr Lavare Henry, the incoming principal of Campion College, affirmed in a recent exposition of his doctoral research, this requires well-nourished, well-adjusted learners exposed to deeply motivated teachers.

AN ELECTION CHOICE

How soon are we going to make that nexus a first priority of our national endeavour? Since voting for largely irrelevant local representatives is imminent, I’m looking to vote for a councillor who will advocate for an increase in the school feeding budget comprising locally grown ingredients: a candidate who supports the setting of individual achievement targets, with proper support, for each student, all teachers and schools: targets for which all accept accountability; not slide into meaningless graduations.

My councillor must call out those who are prone to substitute public relations stunts for the tough task of implementing the Patterson Report. He or she must be a regular presence in every school in the division, arranging mentoring and character-reinforcing social and recreational activities and ensuring that robust Christian and other civic-engaging courses, promoting helpfulness, cooperativism and uniformed programs are centre-staged as antidotes to social media addiction and “leggo-beastism”.

Would you agree that these are some ways to build moral sensibility on a solid Rock rather than shifting sands?

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.