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Patterson and Seaga BOTH PRIME Minister P.J. Patterson and Opposition Leader Edward Seaga yesterday hailed today's celebration of Emancipation Day in public messages issued early yesterday. They, however, differed about the value of the public holiday.
August 1 remains a "source of power and a day of collective pride for Jamaicans," said Prime Minister P.J. Patterson.
Mr. Seaga said that "real emancipation" would come when Jamaicans were "one people and one Jamaica, enjoying the same opportunities and benefits."
He said that until then, Emancipation was a holiday to be enjoyed with friends and family.
Mr. Patterson called on Jamaicans to, "celebrate and honour the legacy of unity, strength and foresight bequeathed to us by our ancestors."
The Prime Minister explained that 164 years ago, the day heralded a new dawn for all people of the world, the vast majority of whom had lived in bondage for over 300 years as the property of a few.
"The release of hundreds of thousands of people brought to our forefathers the dignity to be recognised and a guarantee of freedom."
"No society," Mr. Patterson said, "can survive or prosper if that right is withheld over an extended period of time."
Emancipation Day years ago meant the release of 400,000 slaves from the clutches of slave masters and the horrendous system over which they presided. It served also to release the very slave masters from a system that could not provide them any lasting comfort or absolute security, either in mind or body.
Emancipation Day as currently commemorated, "is reminder that the entire society was released from fear and deepening degradation, and promises all Jamaicans a future where people can work towards the ideal of life, where space is shared on less unequal terms," Mr. Patterson said.
"It is this inheritance of a free and potentially secure society that is worth celebrating now and beyond," he added.
However, Mr. Seaga pointed out that the descendants of former slaves owned marginal, mostly hillside land, from which to make a living, while slave owners enjoyed the full benefits of wealth, education and justice.
"The slaves enjoyed none of these. They had no wealth, no formal education and certainly no justice. Emancipation was supposed to change all that by freeing the slave to own and develop land, obtain an education and enjoy justice. Some 164 years have now passed. The descendants of former slaves own marginal, mostly hillside land from which to make a living."
He said that in terms of education, "thirty per cent of the graduating students in primary schools are illiterate and 20 per cent in the secondary schools. What is worse, three quarters of students in secondary schools graduate without a single pass. The education system provides an education for only the remaining quarter of the students in the system who succeed in gaining passes in exams," he said.
"The gap is not just income, it is a cultural difference which divides the country into two Jamaicas, with neither side showing much understanding or tolerance of each other. The real Emancipation will come when we are one people and one Jamaica enjoying the same opportunities and benefits. Until then, Emancipation is a holiday to be enjoyed with friends and family," he said.
