Ronald Thwaites | Just lip service, really?

What are we to make of the CARICOM leaders most recent burst of crocodile tears about Haiti when Jamaica, headed by the group’s chairman ruthlessly and summarily repatriates every single refugee of Haitian suicidal barbarity without the due process and fairness required by God’s law (see Isaiah 58 and Matthew 25) as also by settled international law? Really?

US THE CARIBBEAN SAVIOUR

More credibly but also more tragically, was the pleading by Ralph Gonsalves for the United States to take up Haiti’s case. More than half a century after Caribbean independence, look what we come to! In its present ideological funk, hope that US will show solidarity with the footloose blacks off their southern coast is a serious joke.

Gunboat diplomacy, yes: reconciliation and reconstruction, no chance. Meaningful regional comity, our best hope to attain muscle on the world stage and relieve suffering, remains a mirage. Suppose the US and Canada treated illegal entering Jamaicans the way we treat similarly positioned Haitians?

WORDS NOT DEEDS

Need more evidence of mental confusion? Here is Jamaica’s government, without a smirk of shame, lavishing merited praise on one of our own, Justice Anderson, while King Charles’ viceroy swears him into the presidency of the same Caribbean Court of Justice whose full jurisdiction we continue to scorn and spurn. Really?

HAITIAN DELUSIONS

And, already frazzled by these contradictions, who really expects us to believe the Chairman when he speaks of CARICOM anticipating free and fair Haitian elections before this year end? Should we really elect delusional people to rule over us?

UNCIRCUMCISED HEARTS

Our coarsened consciences have weakened our capacity to be outraged and angry at what William Wordsworth called “man’s inhumanity to man”. Apart from Jalil Dabdoub’s superb piece on July 6, on the perversion calling itself Christian Zionism, who in Jamaica’s secular leadership and the self-muzzled Christian Churches, have wretched and wept at children in Gaza being slaughtered (oh yes, we say “neutered” when it is the State who kills) as they queue for food and medicine?

Trust me, like-minded zealots exist in our own midst. How else do we understand the frenzied removal of pro-Palestine posters in Montego Bay by a cravenly coward local authority, terrified that the CARICOM leaders might be swayed (as they should have been) to declare themselves against genocide. What principle do we stand up for any more? Really!

CURBING TRUANCY

In schools where I am active we are finding that chronic absenteeism (usually, but not only, on Fridays) is a major reason why many of the low-literate 7th Grade students progress slowly. A culture of thinking that missing a day of school doesn’t matter or the frequent shortage of lunch and transportation money, still prevail. So I fully support and commend all efforts to make it easy to get to and from school especially since many children have to travel long distances. Both subsidised taxi fares and big bus concessions will have to be blended. The American alligators can’t climb the Newcastle road or Devil’s Racecourse.

So let’s stop the partisan scrapping and craft a system which improves learning time. Truancy officers are provided for in the Education Act. One such needs to be assigned to every Quality Education Circle. Average daily attendance must be targeted to improve to 90 per cent in the coming academic year.

CREATING CRIMINALS

Last week Mr Holness lamented that young men succumb to the lure of the gang rather than seeking “meaningful employment” and that consequently the nation’s development is squashed by the lack of human resources. He is right. But why is this happening? And what are government and all of us doing to prevent this scourge from overwhelming us?

In one high school programme with which I am engaged, 20 per cent of students have deep emotional, economic and learning impairments. With special attention most of these can be remediated. Sadly and dangerously, there are another 10 per cent whose mental and behavioural conditions require different and more radical attention than the others. Left alone they will miss the most days in school, disrupt any class in which they are placed and leave at 18years old, illiterate and without functional skills.

Nationwide there are probably 500 such casualties of the system every year. This is the heart of our problem. This number compounds annually and comprises the worst of the qualified worker deficiency about whom our leaders bemoan but do little to avert. This pox should be foremost among election issues. Why is it not? Even if we have drowned our consciences, can we not even perceive our own peril? Really?

BLUNTED SENSIBILITIES

When a society loses its sense of shame, nothing outrages us. We expect to be taken advantage of by an unfeeling cabal who hang on to power or are good at samfying people. Last week national attention was more concentrated on an unburied corpse than the plight of living souls.

EXTORTION

After all the hoopla about the stush town centre near Morant Bay, it turns out that the Parish Council must pay to their landmasters under a contract tied to the US exchange rate, a rent of more than $10 million per month. To pay, the municipality will have to squeeze more from those who have no alternative, but to utilise their services; curtail its programmes or beg central government (meaning all of us) to foot the bill. What high-chest folly is this?

Remember it was the stealthy imposition of exorbitant land taxes which provoked the 1865 rebellion in that same parish. Obviously with only a melanin switch, the oppressive mentality of Eyre and the local vestry of 1865 still live!

Some of us powerful ones have become the same spiritual cretins that our colonisers were.

Same time the State has to lay out $3.5 billion over three years to secure hospitals ( presumably from ourselves) in the south- east region alone. We continue to sterilise billions out of productive use every few weeks while preparing to sell off the future profits from the Sangster airport.

And all this is caricatured as prosperity! Really?

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