Peter EspeutPeter Espeut
WHATEVER ELSE happens in 2005, we know that it will be a year with a difference.
After a record year for murders, we are to have a new commissioner of police. The privatised Air Jamaica is back in the hands of the government. Edward Seaga has now stepped down as leader of the Opposition and as member of Parliament for Kingston West, and the Prime Minister has indicated that he will step down before the next general election.
What of this is real change, and what is simply swapping and gap-filling? Questionable police killings still abound, and no policeman has been convicted in any of 650 instances since 1999 where policemen killed civilians. Corruption in the force is still too common. For me, these facts should be offered to justify the resignation of Commissioner Forbes, not just the high
murder rate.
It is a shame and may be part of the problem that so few people see any connection between the excesses of the police and our high crime rate, between the inability of the police to properly investigate and solve crime and the impunity with which some criminals and murderers operate. What new policies, strategies will the new commissioner bring to make a difference?
NOT A PANACEA
In pursuit of the gospel of privatisation, Air Jamaica was placed in private hands some years ago with much fanfare; for whatever reason that experiment has failed, and in like manner has passed back into the hands of the government. Privitisation, after all, is not a panacea, we have come to realise as has Britain.
And what of the Jamaica Public Service Company? And the 217,000 phone lines? And the toll road experiment?
Fundamentally, Jamaica is a country dominated by fundamentalists, including a heavy burden of market fundamentalists. I don't know whether 2005 will contain any conversion experiences to sound religion, but I doubt it.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Will the new incumbent for that archetype of the garrison, which is West Kingston change the direction of the last four decades?
Tivoli Gardens is one of the safest places in Jamaica because it is the garrison par excellence, because it is under the heaviest of manners; and it is one of the safest of seats, in the past, delivering as much as 106 per cent of the vote for the 'one don'. Will there be anything new and different about the new JLP leader, who obviously in admiration, tried to replicate Tivoli Gardens in western Spanish Town?
WHAT CHANGES AFTER ALL?
The present prime minister has often proudly remarked that he is not the MP of a garrison constituency, and that his name is not linked with that genre of politics.
The front-runner for his replacement is the creator of the most secure PNP garrison constituency, and her three main challengers were the three Cabinet ministers who were up front in attending the orange funeral at the National Arena of a senior garrison don with multifarious interests. What changes might we expect after the ascendancy?
It was Professor Errol Miller who first described over 30 years ago (in a brilliant article titled, 'Education and Social Change in Jamaica') the remarkable durability of Jamaica's unequal education system which adjusts to negate any attempt to create equity or meaningful change.
LE CHATELIER'S PRINCIPLE'
That principle is well-known in chemistry and is called 'Le Chatelier's principle' the propensity for a system in equilibrium to adjust itself to neutralize any efforts to disrupt the equilibrium.
The political, educational, magisterial, religious, business, social, status, ethnic, economic, cultural construct that is Jamaica, is now a comfortable system in equilibrium, which will resist and seek to negate any efforts to bring literacy, equity, justice, human development and environmental integrity to this land and her people.
I see no signs of serious efforts coming from the political parties or the civil service, from the private sector (including the media) or the church to overcome this social inertia, and I see no leader emerging from any sector with the vision and the moral fibre to take us forward.
Yes, the more things change, the more they remain the same, wrote Qoheleth, so many hundreds of years ago, and his shibboleth rings true today. The politics of 'My time now' offers little for most of us seeking a new national order. Oh for a Gandhi or a Mandela or even a Gorbachev in our fair land. From whence shall our salvation come?
Peter Espeut is a chemist and a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
