Morris Cargill

YOU WILL have seen from recent advertisements in The Gleaner, that an effort is being made to organise a peaceful protest for the purpose of waking up our Government to the fact that the country is in big trouble.

Those who seek to organise this protest are careful to emphasise that the protest should be peaceful. This inevitably means that consideration will have to be given to the kind of people who are to be urged to protest. This leads me very reluctantly to consideration of social class. What are known as the lower classes cannot be included for to them a protest means blocking roads and mashing up the place. If the protest is to be peaceful, it must therefore involve what are called the middle classes.

I am not sure, these days, who the middle classes are. I suspect that there are two layers which might be called the lower middle class and the upper middle class. Apart from the working classes, the lower middle class, are people like you and me who have to earn our livings, by doing real work. It is largely the working classes and the lower middle classes, who are really getting the battering from the economic conditions that now prevail, because there are a lot of people who I suppose can be said to belong to the upper class, who are having a very nice time indeed and therefore feel that no protest is necessary. I am referring to those who might be called the captains of industry; the bankers, the successful merchants and, of course, the top executives in our dozens of quangos who draw down huge salaries mostly for doing nothing whatever of any value. They are mostly 'experts' of various kinds, preparing and pushing documents around, attending expensive lunches and dinners and making speeches at countless seminars. Those are all wealthy people. Their large salaries tell only half the story, for they receive considerable perks and allowances about which we are never told.

What we should understand is that Jamaica is run as a welfare state for the people I'm talking about, for there has been a considerable redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. One of the most important agencies for the welfare state has been FINSAC. For the upper classes, the bankers and the merchants, know that FINSAC stands ever ready to bail them out at the first sign of trouble. In consequence, we have quite a large class of people who have at their command a great deal of money, both in Jamaican and US dollars which they happily lend to an impoverished and stupid Government at high rates of interest. By feeding on Government paper, they have no need to indulge in creative enterprises, and they know that so long as the Government is forced to borrow large sums of money from them, interest rates will never be reduced.

You will see therefore, that the upper middle classes will never be induced to join in any sort of protest, for they are sitting pretty and have nothing to protest against. Indeed, some of them have told me they have never seen the country in better shape. That leaves only myself and those of my readers who have to earn their livings, who are likely to regard any protest as necessary. And of course, the working class too. But if it is a peaceful protest we are aiming at, we have only a narrow, but precarious band of people to whom to appeal.

There is of course, another small group or class of people whom I have almost forgotten to mention. These are the drugs barons. Their shipments get confiscated from time to time, but they regard this as a small price to pay for their prosperity, for the simple reason, that when the supply is shortened by confiscations, prices immediately escalate in compensation.

It could be found, that appeals for peaceful protest might fall to the ground like lumps of lead. A pity perhaps. But amongst the potentially peaceful, there are too many stones a ribber-bottom who never know seh sun hot.

Corruption debate

The debate in Parliament on corruption was postponed because of a dispute about the wording of a clause in the bill.

The clause in question read: "Where there is a significant increase in the assets of a public servant which cannot be reasonably explained having regard to his lawful earnings, the significant increase shall be deemed to be illicit enrichment and the public servant shall be deemed to have committed an act of corruption."

Mr. Samuda said that the clause was too harsh. "The language is too definitive.... and it leaves no room."

I see nothing wrong with the clause at all. What does Mr. Samuda want more room for? More room I suppose for him and other politicians to do some artful dodging. I suppose assorted members will keep on trying to amend the proposed bill until they pull out all its teeth. It seems to me weird, that a bill intended to catch corrupt politicians should be left to politicians to draft. The old adage "set thief to catch a thief" is not always a very sensible bit of advice.

End piece

There is now a new method of dealing with the oil tankers which is described as 'bottom loading.' I hasten to add that this does not entail giving fowl pills to tanker drivers.