Same old rhetoric
published: Monday | June 16, 2003
THE EDITOR, Sir:
I WAS reading the news and just had to stop to write about the report on the PM's address to the electorate of St. Ann. Now either The Gleaner is taking this story out of context, or the Prime Minister is sticking to thinly veiled threats of what St. Ann will or won't get if...
On either count I stopped reading the paper to register this very sad note that it appears to me that I am missing any meaningful dialogue from the leader of the governing political party to the victims of 41 years of government without vision. Where are the substantive issues for an economy in St. Ann? Where are the issues of the environmental challenges of matching tourism with infrastructure, so that the children of the voters are able to get good schools and meaningful employment outside of becoming bus boys and bell hops? I didn't read of what the councillors are proposing to make of the pending local government reform to take it to the next level. All I am hearing is that "is we can do it for you, so vote for us again".
People of St. Ann, people of Jamaica, who are these people who keep jerking us back to the cow pole of dependence on almighty Kingston? We should ask the central government ministers who are running around the island telling people to vote for the ruling party, what are they doing to make the future agricultural sector a viable entity. We should ask, as another reader pointed out, why are we planning to spend 6 billion dollars on the sugar industry to keep cane cutters employed in that dead-end job? Can we ask why there has been no offer from those who would raise their salaries and our taxes to do so, of a means of raising of the gross domestic product through incentive to small business, where every person who has registered employees will receive a tax credit on loans made to do business, based on the number of employees?
I am very disappointed to hear the same rhetoric of empty promises made to insult my people who have to still sacrifice to keep them in the lap of luxury, again, after we worked so hard to just get to this new year for our children.
So Mr. Gleaner editor, or Mr. politician, it is hard enough to have to deal with daily living where water, light, housing, school, security, the job are all tenuously maintained, before you tax it, or we buy it in ever lesser quantities; but to get this body blow from the report or the words of more empty foolishness, is enough to mek a big man jus sit down an bawl!
