Black(out) is beautiful

Tony Deyal

IN THE middle of a very staid and formal dinner to celebrate Jamaica's 40th anniversary of Independence there came a bit of light relief. Darkness descended for the second time in one year on a formal State function. With so many politicians present it gave new meaning to the term 'power trip'.

When the power went in February during a function for Queen Elizabeth, many of us thought it was symbolic of the status of the British Commonwealth on which the sun never sets but the light went out. Others thought it had something to do with the Duke of Edinburgh since he was wearing a 'surge' suit. In the candlelight, many of the 100 guests at that function, waxed eloquent about the reasons for the problem. However, they all agreed it was an outrage instead of a mere outage.

Now, with the second such occurrence, many are seeing it as a sign from those on high, not the electricity company, but higher than that. One businessman at the function described it as being representative of the economy. He said it was static. Another businessman said it was a reflection of the credit card mentality, all this charging taking place was the cause of the current situation. A revolutionary brother said it was a blow to the power structure. Another chanted that black is indeed beautiful and blackout is outright beautiful.

A historian from the University of the West Indies, Mona, took creative liberty with Lord Acton. "Power disrupts," he said, "and absolute power disrupts absolutely." It is possible he might have been referring to the brand of Vodka dispensed at the gathering. However, while absolutely certain in his views, he was less "absolut" in his spelling. One backbencher blamed a diminutive member of the Cabinet for the short. He said acidly, "The way this man going he will short out everything." The Prime Minister reputedly blew a fuse and demanded of the Minister responsible for Public Utilities, "Find out wire they doing this to us?" Poor Lennox Lewis sat in the middle of the whole episode thinking dark thoughts about how he put out Mike Tyson's lights. As he said later, "The whole thing came as a bit of a shock really." I can understand knockouts, but not blackouts."

What was interesting is that the failure of the electricity supply occurred after the formal part of the evening at a point when the music had started, the dancing was about to begin and the guests were about to break down. A standby-generator joined the breakdown even before the guests could tread the light fantastic.

A very patriotic person tried to explain it to me on the phone. "Hit was hall a ploy," he confided. "We wanted to get the Nigerian President to feel so sorry for us that he would offer us oil at lower than world market prices." The Nigerian reputation for shrewdness did not come from any tendency to charity. "That's wishful thinking," I said, remembering that there is no fuel like an old fuel. A journalist friend scoffed at the idea and said it might have been caused by a member of the Nigerian delegation who tried to make a phone call to his country and was taken literally when he asked to reverse the charges. My friend was positive that what happened was negative and whosoever did it should suffer terminal consequences. We were poles apart on that score.

Independence is about power. After 40 years of power, it is a useful lesson to be without power, however briefly, so that one can appreciate what is was like when power belonged to the British and not the people. In Jamaica, the power belongs to a United States company, the Mirant Corporation. One of my Jamaican contacts said the 'Mirage Co-operation', but he was only joking. Mirages only happen during the dessert and this had already been served.

The flip side of the Independence coin is that even if you don't have power, you should have influence, enough so that whoever interfered with the power, the breakers who seek to disrupt the currents of history, should be charged. Additionally, 40 years of power should give you a sense of self, of the worth of your own country. After all, there is no place like ohm, or in other words, ohm sweet ohm.

Throughout the Caribbean, Governments are losing power, not through the few people who steal power and sell it to the neighbours for a price, but to other forces, including business and crime. Guyana (whose President Jagdeo was not the only one in the dark) just experienced a situation where a private American-based corporation which holds a telephone monopoly in that country (together with a "900" sex-calls service) had enough clout to get the Inter-American Development Bank to withhold a loan for diversifying the Guyanese telecommunications industry. Hearing about all the Jamaican Government Ministers who whipped out their cell-phones trying to get an explanation for the blackout, I am reminded that another foreign monopoly, Cable and Wireless, has Jamaica's telecommunications industry all wrapped up.

In Guyana last week, I realised that many companies have come off the national grid and are generating their own power. They claim that it costs them less to do so than paying the power company, another State monopoly. I tried to order dinner at a fast food outlet and could not be heard over the din of the generator. As I ate my fried chicken from the American franchise, I thought of my friends in Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Perhaps the symbolic meaning of the Jamaican blackout is that we are all whistling in the dark. Once, some years ago, in Grenada, when I was doing a survey for a Non-Government Organisation about what people understand by the term 'empowerment', this old lady smiled sweetly and said, "Is when the Government give you light and then pay your light bill for you." This is what power to the people is all about.

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