Dawn Ritch Dawn Ritch
PEOPLE'S NATIONAL Party propagandists, including the Most Honourable, are publicly patting themselves on the back for seeing to the needs of over 400 Haitian refugees. They dare anyone to dispute the value of "brotherly and sisterly love" as a moral basis for public action. I not only dispute it, but think it a false morality when practised by them, and utterly disreputable. It is no different from the Jamaican male's notorious mentality. This mentality looks after the girlfriend first and foremost, treats his friends to drinks and loans, while the legally married wife is at home battering to pay the light bill and send the children to school.
All this kind of man is really interested in is the applause of friends, an utterly mindless preoccupation. None of them pay his bills. They are therefore of little consequence in matters of substance. The existence of the girlfriend, or girlfriends, inevitably become an object of jealousy to the wife. To say nothing of the legitimate children whose inheritance is being fractured into parts so tiny as to be worth nothing. Putting income predominantly into wine, women, gambling and song, no matter how diverting, spells doom for the family.
Take, for example, the Haitian situation in Jamaica. Every sovereign state ought to operate on the basis of national self-interest, not personal aggrandisement, and ought to live by the maxim that charity begins at home. Not charity for PNP propagandists, but for the destitute and deprived Jamaicans who live on our streets with only Father HoLung to look after some of them. While the political directorate cossets hundreds of foreign Haitian refugees, it has the unmitigated nerve to lecture Jamaican taxpayers about 'brotherly love'. Why doesn't the Most Honourable at least show 'brotherly love' towards his fellow Jamaicans, since he apparently finds it impossible to be a responsible head of household for Jamaica?
THE MURDER RATE
The murder rate recently went to five poor, black Jamaicans a day. Homes and businesses owned by Jamaicans burn to the ground every night for want of a sound hose or a working fire engine. Yet deposed president Aristide and his family are to be kept in splendour in a Government-owned Great House on the north coast. Why is he able to enjoy his children in comfort and safety, while little Jamaican girls and boys are shot in the back by police, or murdered in their beds? Drugs are found to treat communicable diseases which have been eradicated from Jamaica, and are now brought to this country by Haitians. Yet poor people here have to choose between buying food or buying medicine. Any sensibility which praises the wrong priorities of the Most Honourable is a corrupt mentality. One determined only to make a show, instead of making a difference. And that is a disgusting way to run a country.
I can only hope therefore, that the lesson of Haiti is not lost upon us. After 200 years of black independence that country still cannot make a go of itself. Their refugees are flooding Jamaica's shores and overwhelming our already beleaguered emergency and health services. They come at the invitation of the Most Honourable P. J. Patterson, Prime Minister of Jamaica, whose Foreign Minister has said they will not be turned back in the name of "brotherly love". Nastily, the Most Honourable has also said that the current Interim President of Haiti, Gerard LaTortue was once a Haitian refugee in Jamaica. Mr. Patterson's media minion Barbara Gloudon even delved into Jamaica's colonial history, and fetched out other ex-presidents permitted to take refuge here by the then British Governor.
What the Most Honourable neglected to say was that LaTortue didn't wash up on our shores, and demand to be given a tent and new clothes. He was the house guest of a private Jamaican citizen, and at no time a burden on the state. Equally, deposed and ex-presidents from the Caribbean and Latin America weren't put up in state by the colonial authority. They made their own way. One or two set up businesses. They were not provided with Great Houses and media liaison officers at public expense. Any comparison is therefore both spurious and deceitful.
RECIPROCATION
Another canard floated is that this hospitality is being extended to Haitians as a reciprocation for the welcome Jamaican emigrants themselves have traditionally enjoyed overseas. But everyone of us who went abroad went to a bed or a space in somebody's home, voluntarily extended. In other words we had a place to stay, and a starting job already lined up. Emigrating Jamaicans are not refugees. None of us pitched a tent on a common. We were, and are not, a burden to the state, although it must be said that far too many of us now serve at Her Majesty's pleasure.
There is no comparison between an émigré and a refugee, and the thinking that would ascribe one is sloppy at best, and disturbed at worst. I think they are indeed deeply disturbed, who make these comparisons. Because it demonstrates that after 42 years of black Jamaican Independence they're still only working to impress the white man.
Two hundred years ago when the first refugees from Haiti came to Jamaica, they at least brought with them coffee plants. It marked the start of our successful journey to Blue Mountain coffee. If any of the current refugees have even brought a skill, we haven't yet been told. Furthermore the majority of them are not interested in living in Jamaica to make a contribution. They would far rather contribute to the United States of America, which is where they would be at this very moment had the first 400 refugees not been shipped by the U.S. right back to Haiti.
PNP propagandists, including the Most Honourable, are usually Blackists. They are people who believe that there is no price too high to pay in the name of race. So they never tire of making a point of it. In so doing, they reveal a grudging admiration for the white man, which quite poisons their policy-making.
If the Most Honourable takes limitless amounts of Haitian refugees, he will show up U.S. President George W. Bush who has refused to take them out of U.S. national self-interest. Mr. Patterson hopes to impress the United Nations. It's as simple as that. And it lays bare a shocking slave mentality whether he likes it or not. People like the Most Honourable are properly ignored. They can't put a single chicken in any Jamaican pot. Having given our banks to the Trinidadians, our insurance companies to the Barbadians, they now give our housing to the Haitians. And all in the hope in of a mention in some obscure periodical overseas.
