Shalman Scott, ContributorSO NEW and so different yet so old and so familiar - the corpus of Bruce Golding coronation speech at the national arena recently underscores the fact that the more things change the more they remain the same. This self-evident truth ought to make us moderate our expectations regarding the mundane things of life, especially the fundamental behavioural characteristics of us humans.
In this vein the attitude of Bruce Golding in his coronation address to this nation exposes a scant regard for the fact that his audience is not one of the Jamaica of the 1930s and 1950s where lack of information, gross ignorance and illiteracy reigned supreme. How else can one explain the confidence with which Golding so poorly quoted from Dr Martin Luther King Jr "I have a dream" speech, as he postulates prescriptions for the Jamaican economy ranging from a shift to macroeconomic harmony from macroeconomic stability pronouncements to capping the national debt and budget deficit, and indeed his pet subject on constitutional reform.
In pushing his point on how badly the Jamaican economy has done in the last 16 years, Golding made statistical comparisons with other smaller economies in the Caribbean as he waxed warm on how many of these small countries have experienced increase in output of between 84-144 per cent. In his rants, Golding did not pause to acknowledge the traumatic collapse of our financial sector in the 1990s and other domestic dynamics such as crime and violence which had its early incubation in garrison politics, and has had as its midwives some of whom, I believe, Golding is all too familiar.
COMPARING APPLES AND ORANGES?
While one must acknowledge that the government's role in not dealing speedily with the plugging of waste and reduction of bureaucracy, it goes without saying that there were and are still exogenous factors over which no government would have had control. In addition, when Golding seeks to make these superficial per centum comparisons about economic growth among Caribbean countries he is surely not ignorant of the fact that the economy of the small state of Monsterrat, for example, could grow by 100 per cent by the receipt of, say, five per cent of Jamaica's total investment over the period under review. I am not here advancing this statement as a fact, rather I am using same to underline a principle of logic and common sense.
Golding is not unknowledgeable also of the gap between economic growth and the quality of living standards in these countries with which comparisons are being made with Jamaica. The anaemic growth of the Jamaican economy and its inability to create adequate new jobs and attract signature type investments is nothing of which we can be proud. But if we diagnose wrongly we will prescribe wrongly. Further, if we dishonestly engage the population in half truths and political brinkmanship in respect of our micro and macroeconomic challenges the outcome may be to escalate the endemic mistrust towards the entire body politic and, consequently, consume even Golding at his own game!
What is a real tragedy is that Bruce Golding who claims he wants to be new and different apart from the repetitious expression of a desire to do things together with the government sounded just like those old-time brand of politicians who believed that consummate political trickery and sleight of hand is the mark of political excellence. He should be warned that in today's Jamaica he could be easily dismissed as being unhelpful as the leader of the alternative government in Jamaica.
JAMAICANS ARE NOT FOOLS
Ironically, many persons in public life intellectualise how the population has grown politically sophisticated, yet in their everyday utterances and social discourse there is this huge divide between their talk and their walk. So Golding has announced that he will in dealing with the macroeconomic fundamentals seek to discard the strategy of macroeconomic stability and instead pursue a strategy of macroeconomic harmony. Golding could get away with this kind of humorously nonsensical talk in the Jamaica of the 1930-1950s and after all, as master of political flip flops, would find fertile ground through the preponderance of ignorance existing during those times. Not so in today's Jamaica and therefore he needs to be more cautious. And I dare say more respectful!
Perhaps Bruce Golding may wish to tell us how to harmonise without stabilising. The old style politics of treating Jamaica's very long standing economic and social problems as being a People's National Party problem or a Jamaica Labour Party problem need a consummate transfiguration to a state of welcome civility. In that state the temptation to race into a republican form of government which is being practised also in Haiti with all its implication for gridlock, arrogant demagoguery and over-concentration of power devoid of transparency, checks and balances could be tamed.
One of the criteria for determining our human development index by our international creditors is our opacity factor which has to do with the extent of our state of national transparency and ease of our bureaucracy. For Golding to therefore be advocating complicated layers of government instead of mild adjustment to our Westminster model could become counterproductive to even Golding's desire for economic harmony! In this regard the proposal to capping our national debt and budget deficit ought to be treated by Golding with the same comparison between what is happening in other countries in relation to Jamaica.
Argentina, with a massive and diversified economy within our hemisphere, tried to put themselves into that economic straitjacket and Argentina landed on the worst end of the financial gallows. What obviously was a bad idea has been abandoned! It is even a worse idea for little Jamaica with its geographic location in a zone of natural disasters hurricane and earthquakes in particular a country with an open ended economy lacking in backward and forward economic linkages, and one in which there is no correlation bet-ween our pattern of consumption and pattern of production. In short, a vulnerable economy which will welcome new ideas on how to further manage and pay down the national debt.
Golding's speech offered no suggestion or a solution. It is so easy when one listens to Bruce Golding for one to conclude that he enjoys talking anything! And, of course, he is well schooled and is the best the JLP seem to have to offer at this time.
Other aspects of his speech which call for systems to deal with and further assess the decisions of the DPP to reflect broader participation in the dispensing of justice are very welcome. The proposal to protect our citizens rights through constitutional and legal underpinning is a flash of nationalistic posture which is also encouraging. His determination to unite a fractious JLP and offer us, the Jamaican people, a viable alternative government is also very good for our democracy if the approach is sensible and constructive.
Accordingly, the emergence of Bruce Golding again on to the political stage could be a blessing in disguise. Only if he does not fall into the trap of continually failing to recognise that we are not as pliable as our political forebears. But can a leopard change its spots? Let's watch and see.
