THE EDITOR, Sir:OVER THE past week, I have read about the address given by the Minister of Finance indicating that he allowed expenditures on certain projects to run above the budget during the last election.
The subsequent call for his resignation from different quarters can be understood in terms of the minister using his position in the Government to help his party win a general election in the traditional pork barrel fashion.
I imagine that the minister didn't help himself by addressing his party faithful in a raunchy braggadoccio manner, revelling in his accomplishment and forgetting that you are defiled by what is coming out of you. It was Jack Nicholson in the movie, A Few Good Men, who asked the question, "Can you handle the truth?"
This is the question that Jamaicans must ask themselves. It's time to grow up and face the music. What Dr. Omar Davies confessed is nothing new, it's just the methodology of his confession.
It was George Bernard Shaw who said, "A Government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
This is the story of Jamaican politics over the past four decades, at no time since our independence was there a Government of the people for the people.
Partisan politics has played a major role in the breakdown of the economic, social and moral lifestyle of the Jamaican people.
Instead of using the resources of the state to educate the children and provide what limited benefits they can for those who need it most, they use the scarce resources to line the pockets of those who can help their cause of staying in power.
As the pie becomes smaller and information is more accessible the truth of political wantonness which was always suspected is now revealed by none other than the Minister of Finance!
What a field day for his detractors and those who are hungry for his position.
Before the coup de grace is pronounced we should start taking the beam out of our own eyes before we see the speck in his or those that are guiltless strike the first blow.
It's time to stop and check our history and ponder where do we want to go. Our foreparents, the majority of whom were enslaved, would have dreamed of today when we would be free to govern ourselves and to make the best of our chances to be educated and live morally decent lives in the fear of our Creator.
That we have rejected for an anancy type of living with its coarseness and depravity that goes with it. What is needed is for a more open form of Government where the truth can be revealed but can the truth be handled appropriately by the Jamaican people?
I am, etc,
RAY G. STENNETT
ray4rs2000@aol.com
Bronx, NY
Via Go-Jamaica
