Delroy Chuck
WHEN THINGS go wrong, people do not like to face reality, or the truth, especially when they are painful, depressing and frustrating. It is better to hope, to dream and to wish for better days. Yet, our country cannot turn around and make progress unless we are willing to confront the reality that we have made the wrong choices and as a consequence live in a rotten society. I am aware there are many who feel I should not write about the negative and darker side of life and should focus more on the positive and brighter side and where there are problems suppress them simply give solutions.
I think it is naive and ridiculous to hide the truth and turn our backs on the festering and deepening problems overtaking our society. It is even more ridiculous to focus on solutions without fully understanding the problems, as the latter are more likely to get worse and their solutions delayed. When I was a youngster, solving mathematics problems was my pride and joy and I recall many moments of great joy as I tackled and solved tough and recondite problems.
I took a degree in Special Mathematics and taught math for a few years. I quickly recognised that the main difficulty students had with mathematics was their inability to fully understand and visualise the problem; once they were able to do so, then the solution came easily.
I believe the problems of our rotten society are no different and until we fully understand the underlying problems, and their causes, the solutions cannot be easily found and we will sink even deeper into despair.
Our society is rotten and it is not getting better, it is getting worse. If we dare to think otherwise, then ask the family whose loved one has just been murdered, or the people who suffer the indignity of state abuse and harassment, or the people who have no permanent roof over their heads, or the sick who cannot afford the medicine or the cost of medical attention, or the young mother who cannot feed her children or send them to school, or the old and indigent who yearn for a decent meal and suffer from hunger for days, or the young ghetto man who has never worked save and except for the odd jobs here and there, or the recently unemployed whose prospect for another job is quite remote, or the businessman who has never seen business so bad, and so on and on. When we face these realities and so many more then we must ask why?
Jamaica is not a good and decent place to live at this time. To get things done is a grand hassle and to conduct business with the government bureaucracy is a nightmare. Everybody seems to have a chip on his/her shoulder and the tension, frustration and bitterness of living in a rotten society are easily discerned. Then, the fear of crime, the insecurity, the indiscipline and uncouth behaviour everywhere, the dilapidating infrastructure, the disappearing jobs and opportunities, the migration of loved ones and friends, the inability to get a good education and decent social interaction for our children, and the increasing lack of choices, alternatives and hope make Jamaica a hard and rotten place to live. Having faced that reality, then the challenge must be how to change it.
Jamaica can be a better place. It can certainly be an island jewel and take its place amongst the civilised countries and become a desirable place to live. But, we need to change the type of politics we practice here.
Accountability
Our politics is rotten to the core and the first set of persons to deny this simple problem will be the politicians. Politicians passionately believe power can solve the nation's ills. I think otherwise. I think politics interferes far too much in the lives of our people and, without accountability, tend to corrupt everything. Who gets what, when and how depends far too much on political decision instead of on merit and on fair and reasonable standards. The consequence is that our people become dependent on politicians and politics to meet their needs, ease their poverty, repair their houses, send their children to school, provide jobs and opportunities, bury their dead, and solve and ease all their problems.
If we are to move forward then a new political culture is desirable and necessary. The limits of politics and political power must be appreciated and, like elsewhere, our government will have to be reinvented. I accept that it means major constitutional surgery to balance power more evenly throughout the government instead of in one or a few hands. I do not accept that the separation of powers is necessarily the way forward as I see how the same problems we experience here are even worse in countries Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, etc., that have the separation of powers model.
What we have in place at the present time is a political culture of paternalism and mendicancy in which politicians are contemptuous of the people, seeing them as mere voters, as raw material to be socially engineered, as dumb unthinking herds incapable of judging or even to make up their minds in a simple referendum on a final court.
What is really desirable is a true commitment to the democratic ideals and the free and open marketplace in which the individual is supreme, in which he makes choices and accepts responsibility for his decisions, in which the State provides a level playing field and the private sector increases the choices and opportunities for people to create wealth, get rich and provide jobs and opportunities for others. There is no need to reinvent the wheel; recent history has shown the way.
Communism, socialism and state-dominated economies are failures, and fail to provide the good life for their people. Capitalism has triumphed and is the only sure and successful path to a prosperous and quality society.
If we are to change course, remove the rot and decline and create a good, decent and quality society then we have to recommit ourselves to the free and open market economy and away from the command economy.
We need to stop thinking and believing that government and the State can be the sugar daddy and godfather of the people and start to shift the burden, responsibility and power back to the people. In truth, we need less government, less bureaucracy, less handouts, less governmental interference and protection and greater empowerment of our people to create and make choices and to fend for themselves. Until we are prepared to make that giant leap, we will continue to live in a rotten society.
Delroy Chuck is an attorney and Opposition Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by e-mail at Delchuck@Hotmail.com.
