PUBLIC POLICY is the sole responsibility of the People's National Party (PNP) Cabinet. They are required to design that policy within the law, and in the interests of public safety and prosperity.
Jamaica has had neither prosperity nor safety for several years. The supposed economic light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, prior to the General Elections last year, turned out just to be deception of the Jamaican people by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet.
Once the PNP won, Dr. Omar Davies, Minister of Finance, gleefully confessed and boasted at a party conference that he had wasted the country's resources in order to ensure their political victory.
That having been done he told the party faithful not to worry, he would figure out how to fix it in the fourth term. This is callous in the extreme. Callous public policy and irresponsible public administration.
Readers should note that the island's treasure and the people's blood are being wasted through the courts and lost in the streets, schoolyards, and bedrooms of this abused country. In effect, Dr. Davies has consigned the problems of the financial meltdown to the hands of the local legal fraternity and international forensic auditors. Like Pontius Pilate, he appears to have washed his hands of it.
In a sense he has indeed. Because the financial meltdown over which Dr. Davies presided by way of press conference and writ, has had the inevitable domino effect. It has led to terrible social consequences which have become the insoluble problem of his Cabinet colleague, Dr. Peter Phillips, Minister of National Security.
MELTDOWN
The meltdown led to the unemployment of both skilled and unskilled Jamaicans at unprecedented levels and to a socially corrosive effect. Indeed it has created a new social order where a beggar either gets $100, or tears the chain off your neck. But not before carefully and sincerely explaining that begging is the only alternative to criminality left.
The fact is, however, that suicide is another, and has become a tragic feature of Jamaican life. Also fatalities from domestic disputes and increased murderous gang warfare.
The Cabinet, littered as it is with attorneys-at-law and doctoral theses, should realise that when young men cannot find gainful occupation, they are often tempted to find meaning in alternative lifestyles (read crime). The worst part is, much criminal activity is unprofitable, complicated, meaningless and dangerous. Most young people would prefer to have a reliable job. They turn to criminality only when they've given up hope.
This elementary recognition has escaped the Cabinet.
Instead they have only an appetite for analysis, which leads them up a garden path time after time. In this ludicrous activity they are guided by the lame leadership of the Most Honourable P. J. Patterson.
Here is yet another example. Police Commissioner Francis Forbes in an unguided moment of clarity, announces that the national crime plan has failed, and his January targets are 'out-the-window'.
He blames this on the absence of the promised social projects in the inner city by state agencies and ministries.
Alarmed, the Most Honourable and constitutional drifter calls from abroad to set up a meeting with him and Dr. Phillips. At that meeting the Most Honour-able demands a review of the crime plan by those responsible, and that a register of his administration's social interventions be immediately compiled.
This latter element is absurd. How can the Cabinet be spending the island's treasure and not already know exactly where, what or how it is spent? Not to be outdone the Commissioner of Police shamefully back-tracks and joins the herd behind the Most Honourable, thus losing any credibility he was about to gain.
To add insult to injury, the Prime Minister assigned the task of a register to the rather plaintive Dr. Paul Robertson, Minister of Development who, while Minister of Industry, had a pipeline of projects perpetually running on empty. One hopes the registry of social projects is not going to join the pipeline.
If the Prime Minister intends to throw state funds at the problem without hope of benefit or recovery, Phillip Paulwell is the more logical choice.
It escapes both the Police Commissioner and the Most Honourable that social interventions or projects, no matter how necessary or how worthy, cannot replace proper education, jobs and employment growth for the nation's young people.
After the meeting there was much dissembling with the public. Dr Phillips said there had been some progress under the Plan. The Commissioner of Police concurred.
The shocking truth is that, Plan A having failed, there is clearly no Plan B or C anywhere around, neither at the time of drafting Plan A, nor in the face of its failure eight and a half months later.
NEW CRIME PLAN
The new crime plan now announced by the Government is that the Organised Crime Unit will be upgraded to a division, and there is to be zero tolerance for traffic offences. The total poverty in planning and policy is laid bare for all to see.
The Government's statement indicated that "many criminals were nabbed as a result of increased vigilance in stemming traffic violations." As casually as that, therefore, is national crime policy formed, even as its review shows increased violations evidenced by increased traffic accidents. The thread by which this new crime plan hangs together is little more than a wisp of smoke.
The statement also goes on "As a result of this displacement (the dismantling, destabilisation and displacing of criminal gangs from targeted communities) a new pattern has developed where gangs have migrated to other communities, posing a new challenge to the security forces."
The national crime policy we are told, therefore, revolves around this so-called new pattern. But this has been the same old pattern since the mid-1970s.
For a quarter of a century, gangs have fled to the hills and rural areas whenever they are under pressure from the security forces in Kingston.
Readers will remember that the mid-1970s was when Michael Manley's flirtation with democratic socialism and Castro caused the first economic meltdown in Jamaica. Investment dried up, businesses closed down, and people were thrown out of work wholesale. Crime and murder in Kingston increased to levels never before seen. Pressured by security forces, the gangs fled to rural St. Catherine. This was when the 'Hot Steppers' set up their criminal headquarters in the Wareika Hills. Today we have virtually permitted Mountain View Avenue to secede from the rest of the country and become a 'No-Go' area. This road was the island's main artery to the airport. There is a certain sad irony that, for safety's sake, we must now use the new Michael Manley Highway, the man who started our continuing decline into economic and social disorder.
The question today is why didn't the Police Commissioner have the police watching where the gangs were running to, and preventing crime in these rural districts? The answer is that a new and farcical philosophy has taken hold of the Minister of National Security, Dr. Peter Phillips, no doubt guided by the Prime Minister himself. They have now virtually abandoned the policing and monitoring of poor communities, in favour of setting up command posts within them.
Even Maxine Henry-Wilson, Minister of Education, is a disappointment. Hearing of a report by the Jamaica Teachers' Association on schoolchildren having to pay 'protection money', 'tolls' to come to school, and "the rape of female students on a regular basis", she said she hasn't yet seen the report, and suggested it was a "community issue" not "a school issue", and that perimeter fences cost too much money. (The Observer August 20, 2003).
Elsewhere she states 95 per cent of the education budget must go to salaries. Are they all quite mad? It seems formulators of public policy have driven themselves into a state of mental paralysis. They are incapable of doing anything that makes sense.
