Professor Errol Miller (left) chairman of the Electoral Advisory Committee, listens keenly to a point being made by Rev. C.S. Reid just before the professor delivered the annual Grace, Kennedy Foundation lecture Tuesday at Le Meridien Jamaica Pegasus. Looking on (centre) is Senator Douglas Orane, chairman and chief executive officer of Grace, Kennedy. - Dennis Coke
JAMAICA'S COURSE in the 21st Century will be determined by the individual and collective choices made by its citizens says Professor Errol Miller, chairman of the Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC).
The University of the West Indies (UWI) professor made the comments Tuesday night as he delivered the annual Grace, Kennedy Foundation lecture at Le Meridien Jamaica Pegasus Hotel. He spoke on the topic "Jamaica in the 21st Century: contending choices". He was delivering the 13th lecture in the series which began in 1989. Former Bank of Jamaica Governor, the late G. Arthur Brown delivered the first lecture.
Professor Miller presented three broad areas of choice and the consequences they are likely to have. The choices are repeating Jamaica's past; freezing the state of flux in the society; and creating the just society with a sense of destiny.
He asserted that Jamaica could make significant progress by moving forward from the past, the idea being to ensure the mistakes made then are not repeated today. But he pointed to the same mistakes being made up to 300 years later. These include the exclusion of the majority from the benefits accruing in the society. He pointed out that the majority continues to pay for the debts of the elite just as they did at the time of Governor Musgrave's confidential report to the Colonial office in the 1870s, which highlighted the poor living condition of the peasantry.
The EAC chairman pointed to the continued reliance on the military option to take care of the "disaffected of the disadvantaged". He warned that the "massive and brutal repression of violent outbursts" used by the system would no longer work. He said the cycle of doing things the same way was repeated when the new elite replicates its predecessors.
Professor Miller urged Jamaicans to move away from a country where successive governments looked after their own; oppositions seek power without a plan to govern; management pays itself well and the workers poorly; unions press for increases unrelated to the capacity of the enterprise to pay; a legal system tough on petty crime and soft on white collar crime; continued disrespect for each other; and the continued dedication of some to defraud the electoral system.
He has advocated a brand new approach to doing things. But he cautioned that this must be accompanied by the development of the intellect "in all the ways that people are intelligent". In this regard he said the mastery of information technology was important.
