Ronald Thwaites | Spotlight on accountability

This means being responsible for and responsive to each other.

The redeeming national virtue of 2025 has been the generosity of spirit, that most sacred civic faculty, shown by so many Jamaicans to the needs and pain of strangers, relatives and friends battered by Hurricane Melissa. The value of their gifts of self cannot be quantified and defied organisation. They are movements of the heart.

Way beyond those seeking big-ups by photos in the press or the empty-handed disaster tourists who think selfies with victims improved their popularity, were the thousands who donated time, talent and treasure. I know of young people, often berated for their selfishness, who emerged from behind their smart phones and showed solidarity towards people they did not know. Churches and civic groups have not been outdone. Presence, material help and emotional support, while never enough, have contained the hopelessness, desperation and grief of those whose lives have been upturned. No ID, no TRN needed. No press coverage to parade themselves. Just spiritual accountability.

“Those who had gathered a large amount did not have too much and they who were in need did not have too little” – (Exodus 16:18).

JAMERICANS

Local effort has been matched and in some cases exceeded by diaspora beneficence. For many Jamericans, working two and three jobs while dodging ICE , their memories of where Auntie lived or where their navel string was buried, has prompted crucial remittances and extra barrels.

How much more proof do we need of the indispensable but most often undervalued role of Jamaicans abroad to national well-being? Their sense of responsibility will for a long time continue to be the major source of foreign exchange propping up the economy. They do for us what we should be doing for ourselves.

FOREIGNERS

Shared human concern has been the gift of foreigners whose love for the land which so many of us scorn, has motivated them to send and come with more food, tarpaulins, medicines and smiles than our hapless and often wrong-footed state could provide.

They have laboured beside us despite the frustration of bureaucracy and the official “would haves, we are thinking about, investigations and assessments are ongoing” excuses for inaction.

JUST CHECKING

How many houses has the government built since the storm? Where are the successors to World Central Kitchen to be found while thousands of victims still have to rely on emergency food aid?

Why isn’t every school kitchen being enabled from January morning not only to feed students whose home situations have been compromised but to serve as emergency kitchens for the broader community?

PUBLIC CONSCIENCE

We have the resources to do all this and more. Teach generosity of spirit and civic accountability by getting children involved in cleaning up and beautifying schools, keeping toilets sanitary, not spurning or wasting clean food. Engaging them thus can inculcate habits of respect and gratitude: in the midst of distress recognising the value of service, the dead-end of an attitude of entitlement. Hedonism can’t help recovery. Wholesome engagement can.

TALK THE TRUTH

How many of us paid close attention to Richard Byles’ end-of-year prognosis? He acknowledged the reality of lower tourism earnings in contrast to the breezy optimism coming from official sources.

What should his realism mean for foreign exchange allocations in the new year? Can the same free-for-all prevail without squeezing the availability and price of the goods and services we really need ? And how will reduced revenue affect the already bloated public sector wage bill even as there is heavy pressure building for increases?

These issues should be the grist for public discussion in January. That is if we all accept accountability for the nation’s future – Richard Byles also spoke of growth being possible only if there is the capacity to execute projects efficiently. He means doing work on time and within budget. But how can that be when there is little accountability among those employed by the State whose jobs are permanent and whose annual evaluation is always near perfect?

Every honest Minister of government will privately attest to the frustration of having policies and projects flop because of poor capacity to execute. What about those contractors to whom corrupt officials are beholden? Those who dispense the kool-aid at the press conferences want us to equate aim with achievement.

PERFORMANCE

The stark truth is that in times of crisis the capacity of public agencies to achieve much higher levels of productivity is severely limited. Repression is the only thing they do decisively.

For all its other sins, the light and power company has shown in its relatively swift restoration of electricity service, an example other agencies should follow. Absence of accountability in the education, health, national security and infrastructure sectors predispose mediocre outcomes.

RECOLONISATION?

We enter 2026 surrounded by the virulent resurgence, two centuries later, of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine whereby the independence of the Caribbean nations is limited by the geo-political policies of the United States, no matter how unprincipled or deadly. The colonizing autocracy of Europe in the 19th century has now been taken over by the very nation who first feared it .

Jamaica ‘s people, trade, currency and broader economy are inextricably linked with the US. We do not need, nor could we withstand any fight with them. But that need not make us a servile colony as Trinidad and Tobago seems to crave.

In this New year we pilgrims of hope and good purpose must recognise the peril around us, suppress our stupid and contrived differences, our resistance to be held accountable, and draw more inclusive sufficiency and well-being from the principles and practices of our liberal, constitutional democracy.

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