DAWN RITCHDAWN RITCH
THE OLD adage that 'charity begins at home' applies everywhere else but Jamaica.
Here the Government finds millions of dollars in the twinkling of an eye for the entertainment of the Haitian Aristide, his entourage, and the accommodation of over 200 of his cohorts who washed upon our shores, while withholding money from an emergency service like fire.
Both the fire station and the police station in the parish of St. Mary have been condemned. Buildings don't suddenly collapse overnight, only after many, many long years of neglect and no maintenance.
It is noteworthy that St. Mary has been solidly behind the People's National Party (PNP) for the last two centuries.
Horace Clarke was the standing PNP Member of Parliament (MP) in that parish for at least a century. On his retirement he was given a National Honour for what I can't imagine, since he presided over a parish in which the institutions crumbled utterly. It is a microcosm of the entire island.
MORE AT RISK WITH FIRE
The Government has been moving the St. Mary police from pillar to post recently, only to discover that the temporary facilities had no sanitary conveniences. Some policemen are squatting upstairs the local post office, and others have been temporarily located elsewhere outside the parish. What help can they be to the citizens of St. Mary?
Fire-engines are immobilised for lack of spare parts, those that are still more or less in one piece. The fire stations are crumbling and being closed one after another. Almost every night the television carries news of people and babies perishing in fires and buildings consumed in every part of the island.
To add insult to injury, the Government refuses to provide any resources to the Minister of Local Government, Portia Simpson Miller, who is responsible for the fire service. They have cut even the inadequate funds that were provided last year.
Those who follow politics closely and are familiar with the antics of politicians, will find it hard to avoid the conclusion that Portia Simpson Miller is being singled out by her own Government for the type of special treatment designed to decrease her popularity.
These antics of theirs are a barefaced attempt to influence those poll-ratings, and above all party decisions about who is to succeed the Most Honourable.
If that is so, then I wonder if the Government realises they have left the country more at risk of fire than ever, through sheer spite towards a particular individual.
Fire stations are essential sources of protection for all the people of the country. It seems they are to be denied us because of sheer partisanship and irresponsibility.
During a meeting of Parliament's Standing Finance Committee Audley Shaw, Opposition Spokesman on Finance, moved a motion to express "grave concern at this $637 million shortfall" in the allocation to the fire service.
The motion was defeated by 26 Government votes to 15 from the Opposition. Mrs. Simpson Miller abstained. The abstention created pandemonium in the Government benches.
House Leader Dr. Peter Phillips, and her main rival for the presidency of the PNP, puffed up so big he looked like he was about to burst. K.D. Knight was about to have a fit.
But something else took the cake when it was all over. It was the sight of parliamentary newcomers like Maxine Henry Wilson sticking her fingers aggressively in Mrs. Simpson Miller's face, and Wykeham McNeill screaming in her face with his own pressed up against hers, and so contorted that he looked like he was having his teeth pulled without anaesthetic.
Mrs. Simpson Miller is a senior MP and has several times acted as deputy Prime Minister. Indeed, she was acting as Prime Minister at the time when those two viragos launched themselves at her in the House of Parliament, and in front of the nation's television cameras. Would they have done so to the Most Honourable? I doubt it.
POLITICAL POWER TO
VESTED INTERESTS
At least she behaved like the lady that she is, even though it was obvious that she couldn't fathom what they were on about. Either they were deliberately trying to provoke her into hitting them with her handbag, or they both have neither manners nor conscience.
How could the Government benches fail to vote for a motion that expresses grave concern about the disastrous shortfall in the funding of an essential service like fire-prevention?
What did they expect her to do? Vote that as Minister of Local Government, she was just as blithely unconcerned as they?
It would have taken no skin off the nose of the Government benches to support a motion expressing "grave concern" for the fire service. They ought to be concerned about that, and a great deal else besides.
So Portia Simpson Miller broke ranks with mindless and vile party blather. For that she got a standing ovation from the Opposition benches, and the admiration no doubt of the rest of the country. When you dig a hole for your sister, dig two.
The value of political power to vested interests in this country, and the lengths to which they will go to protect it, cannot easily be imagined.
A lot of the serious money made in the last 15 years in Jamaica was made on the basis of one's relationship with the political centres of power. It had nothing to do with entrepreneurship as we know it, but entirely 'special positioning'. As Maxine Henry Wilson herself said in the past, "Politics is about who gets what, when and how".
As long as Mrs. Simpson Miller appears in any way to buck that system, she will be the least popular member of her own party internally. And so she is.
This is why the Government is able to throw money around with wild abandon. Because it means nothing to them. And they are all talk and no action where it counts.
In such an environment, Mrs. Simpson Miller's mere abstention, or refusal to act, speaks volumes. It shows that her colleagues are living in a fool's paradise, and trying to convince us all it's heaven. These people are like Nero, fiddling while Rome burns.
FOOTNOTE
Will the person, whether political or otherwise, who sent two men armed with police issue automatics to my office last Wednesday to tell me that they don't like what I write, please desist. Write your own column instead, and be brave enough to sign your name. I have reported the matter to the police.
