Ronald Thwaites | Easter Thoughts

Amid many of the Scripture readings during last week was the story of declining Roman imperial power ruling over Palestine during Jesus’ time. The Jewish people were cowed down by Pilate’s military force and impoverished by the taxes exacted by Caesar.

Their leader Herod was dissolute and exercised little authority. He and the religious leaders cared more about their status and the minute rituals of the law both secular and religious, than the liberation of ordinary people.

They were the Pharaohs of that age. Life and indeed all creation only had value if it suited their purposes. Doesn’t this story sound familiar even in this day and age?

No wonder they had to destroy someone whose message, life and death witnessed to values, behaviour and possibilities far superior than their narrow horizons. The power of love still wrestles with the selfish idols we create in futile search for happiness and self-gratification.

LOCAL STRUGGLES

There were many instances of this continuing struggle alongside the religious observances this Holy Week. On Monday there were few JUTC buses on the busy Papine to downtown routes. Transport policy had become identical to political opportunism. Every second car has become a taxi, charging whatever the operator can get away with and driving with complete disregard for road traffic rules.

Having well-primed taxi men on your side is essential to election day success. Rules of the road do not apply to government politicians with illegal blue lights and sirens, the police who scream that their every move is an emergency; completely untamed motorcyclists and now the taxi fleet , set free by the announcement that traditional JUTC high density routes will be handed over to them while the taxpayer will pay for their unbridled license.

Efforts to walk-back the damage will not work. Probox has become the Patty-Pan of this administration. This is pure selfishness and arrogance by the imperious imposters.

ABOLISHING ROAD CARNAGE?

Then there was the usual unconvincing handwringing about road fatalities and injuries and the promise of a public safety campaign. Futile! Driver permits are easily bought and motorcyclists operate as they please without training. So what do we expect? Until we clean up and intensify driver and rider training, there can be no sustained road safety . Where is the effort to do that?

To hell with the Road Traffic Act. The rule of the road is for me to get through by any means possible. Consideration, an essential element of humane and Christian ethics, has no place. The situation on our roads describes the wider Jamaican ethos.

LEADING CHILDREN ASTRAY

We see its manifestation in many schools. Most children are not naturally disordered: they are hopelessly socialised. They come to class so wounded. Two or three of the most disordered can wreck the progress of a whole class and frustrate a teacher to migrate. Little learning can take place. Check the exam outcomes. Recently some professors came to school to discuss important language issues. They fled when confronted with the disorder which prevailed.

All the signals from outside society militate against education success. What serviceable values will the allure of Carnival encourage in our children?

Many students are crying out for order, affirmation and meaning. Often they get neither in their home and community settings – nor from the National Standard Curriculum. Cursing, fighting and repression are their normal responses to problems. That is what they see everywhere on the roads and even when they visit Gordon House. Who are their mentors?

WATER QUALITY

It is reassuring to hear that Jamaica’s drinking water quality is so good that cruise ships want to buy it. In the lower Blue Mountains there are several very popular swimming holes in the streams from which city dwellers eventually drink. At those locations people urinate, expectorate, carminate, defecate and, likely, fornicate.

It is good to provide places for the public to recreate particularly now that beach access is so restricted but body fluids are not conducive to pure drinking water. It is pure selfishness and disorder to allow this in the public water supply. Of course chemicals are added further downstream. But given what is happening, it must be best to boil before consuming. I am sure the high-ups trumpeting water quality drink bottled water.

Where is the expensive and top-heavy National Water Commission in all this? Do they adequately protect their lands from squatting and our water sources from pollution?

CRUCIFIXION OF HAITI

We now know that more than half of Haitians will be seriously food insecure by mid-year and thousands of the most vulnerable, especially children, will die slowly on the cross of starvation. Internal strife and the abrupt withdrawal of American food aid are worsening the situation.

Jamaicans remain blithely ignorant or unconcerned about this destruction of a proud and noble people – our next-door neighbours. We sinfully reject their asylum seekers and salve our consciences by sending a few policemen and soldiers as peacekeepers.

The United States which wastes about 40 per cent of its domestic food supply says it has no more to send, despite its own share of responsibility for Haiti’s distress. At last France seems apologetic for its rape of Haiti. It should repay the money extracted for more than a century, right now – with interest and at current value. Reparatory justice demands nothing less.

COMMON CAUSE

Haitians and Jamaicans are of the same stock. As Rex Nettleford said, Africans were differentiated only by where the slave boat stopped. Ours should be the loudest and most cogent voice on behalf of our nearest neighbours. This supremely moral cause should unite us as Christian people, as a black nation and simply as human beings. Instead of concern and caring about the holocaust next door, we are spending billions on the empty fizz of bacchanal and in the effort to retain or gain political power. That is Babylon.

ABIDING HOPE

Give thanks that hope is not lost. The pogroms of empires, then and now, trying to make themselves great by cruel selfishness and advantage-taking of others, will fail. The God-Man who was crucified and rose again continues to inspire a personal , national and world order of equity, mercy and love. Because He lives, we can face down the empires of unconcern, arrogance and hate among us and beyond us.

Easter Blessings.

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