Delroy Chuck BY ANY realistic measure, Jamaica sinks into deeper poverty. Curiously, we consume like a First World country, at least by a small minority, but certainly not producing like one. We import more than we export and, consequently, our balance of payments with the rest of the world gets worse and there is no immediate prospect of reversing the downward slide. We survive and enjoy a decent quality of life from loans, grants, remittances and the proceeds of the drugs trade and, if any or all of these should stop, our economy would implode and certainly crash. Jamaica is not producing and unless economic policies are reversed persistent poverty is the logical outcome.
Commentators may argue and disagree over the level of poverty now overwhelming the country. When is someone living in poverty or experiencing conditions of poverty? From the ivory tower of the university, or the air-conditioned office of business, one rarely gets a glimpse of abject poverty. Until one visits the cardboard villas of the inner cities or the squatter communities in the rural districts, it is not possible to really understand the extent and depth of the country's poverty. If members of so-called civil society see how poverty-stricken Jamaicans live, their stomach would turn and they would retch. Right on the gully banks of Barbican or Grants Pen, people live in dire poverty and in conditions not really fit for human habitation.
Interestingly, when the police, in their cordon and search in Payne Land and Hannah Town, saw the decay and rot of the communities, they were astonished at the poverty and community degradation. One does not have to go this far to see the decline and squalor. Simply drive along Maxfield Avenue or Spanish Town Road or travel through Central Kingston below East Queen Street, and see the dirt, abandoned buildings, graffiti walls, potholed roads, and the indisputable evidence of deepening poverty, and one cannot help but despair and wonder what hope is there for our children and the children of our gardeners, helpers and employees?
In fact, the city of Kingston is a national disgrace and a scandal on the whole nation. Kingston is dying, covered in garbage and filth, overwhelmed by disorder and confusion, populated by informal commercial traders and hustlers on the main thoroughfare, full of beggars and idlers everywhere, and abandoned as a worthwhile business district. But, what is true of Kingston is also true of every other parish capital - they are testimony to the slime and grime into which our country is sinking. Urban maintenance, renewal and upgrading are low priorities or non-existent in a country starved of investment, production and budget surplus.
Around Jamaica, the evidence of poverty, decline and decay is overwhelming. Why is Jamaica getting poorer, in spite of claims of progress and solid achievements? If Jamaicans are foolish enough to believe we are on the right track, we better start to think and change our prospective quickly. If the government foolishly believes it has a mandate to continue on the same foolish path then it won't be long before the country erupts into chaos and riots. I strongly believe the government needs to revamp and refashion its whole political and economic policies, which are largely responsible for the deeper poverty into which we sink.
Jamaica gets poorer from the politics of poverty that has been pursued for too long. To be sure, the most fundamental problem fettering the progress of the nation is the belief that politics is about who gets what, when and how. When politics dominates everything, then the real likelihood is that the nation stagnates and suffers, as wealth is not created and poverty is actually distributed. If politics determines how the resources of a nation are distributed then why worry to produce and create wealth. It is much easier to know and brush shoulders with those in the corridors of power. If politics determines who gets the favoured contract, the best deals or allowed to influence economic decisions, then mediocrity overtakes and nothing is done well.
Why has the country not grown economically in the past ten years and more? The simple answer is that the government has had one fanatical, political policy, which has no sound economic basis, and that is to protect the currency at all costs and by all means possible and available. The high interest rate policy has been steadfastly and foolishly used, strangling and suffocating the rest of the economy, enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor, and caused our country to build up a massive national debt. We spend tens of billions of dollars to protect the currency annually and, still, the currency devalues without much abatement. Ten years ago, we tried to keep the dollar below 20 to 1, now it has passed 50 to 1, and no one can really say at what level it will stop. When we allow politics to dominate economics, it is simply the politics of poverty. If we are to turn this country around then we must start allowing economics, instead of politics, to dominate our thinking.
In truth, when the history of the nineties and early twenty-first century is written, it will be a story of the dominance of politics, of how politics dominated economics, of how the politics of handouts brought the country to its knees, and of how politics messed up Jamaica. That history is yet to be written and the story is still unfolding. It can still be a story of rescue and recovery but is there the political will? The real challenge to the government and the nation must surely be to recover a distressful nation from the economic mess into which it is deeply enmeshed. That cannot happen unless production, investment and the creation of wealth dominate our national thinking and decisions.
Delroy Chuck is an attorney-at-law and Opposition Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by e-mail at delchuck @hotmail.com.
