Peter Espeut
DENIAL WON'T make anything go away. As Bruce Golding prepares to move in to the safe seat of Tivoli Gardens, he and his campaign team insist that Tivoli is now not and maybe never was a garrison constituency! This is a bad start! What Jamaica needs now is a politics that is new and different. This does not appear to be on the horizon any time soon.
The world knows that Tivoli Gardens is the archetype of the Jamaican garrison community, created by a master social engineer. Every other garrison community is a less than perfect copy, including the garrison in Spanish Town which Bruce Golding created before his short vacation with the NDM. It was such a good JLP garrison that when he ran in that seat for the NDM, he lost the election hands down, and some of his lieutenants lost their lives. What we need now are politicians who will call a spade a spade and a garrison a garrison and who will set their face firmly in the opposite direction. There should now be a national debate about how to dismantle the garrisons, not a campaign to deny their existence.
This political backwardness is not limited to the JLP. All the major contenders for the PNP leadership either preside over garrison constituencies or have been noted for attending the funerals of one or more garrison dons. Our future is dark indeed!
In most other countries, to attend such funerals would be political suicide; the slightest hint of a connection with alleged drug-dealers and thugs would be a major political indiscretion which could mean the end of a political career. In Jamaica, it seems that successful political careers depend not just upon the reality of these links, but upon these links manifestly appearing to be strong.
CRITICISM OF OURSELVES
This is not, fundamentally, a criticism of our politicians; it is a criticism of ourselves. It is true that people get the politicians they deserve. If we demand honesty from our politicians, they would have to be honest to gain our support. If we demand that our politicians pass us favours and political spoils under the table jobs, contracts, houses, hurricane zinc and the like then they will become experts at that.
And if you think that I am here just bashing the poor, you are mistaken. Politics in this country runs on money big money; it is the Jamaican private sector that funds politics in Jamaica including the garrisons and the thugs, the buses with the party activists hanging out the windows, and the provision of scarce benefits and spoils. It is not only the poor who demand political favours and who receive political spoils; our brand of politics in Jamaica is very much the creation of our private sector, which sustains it and gives it enduring life.
BLOOD ON MANY HANDS
In my more than a decade as a columnist for this newspaper I have been consistent in my claims that our politicians govern with the consent of the majority of the governed: including the poor and the private sector. There is blood on many hands.
And the churches are not to be left out. If the Church is to be the conscience of the nation, then truly the salt has lost its savour. The Church is in Norbrook, in Nine Turns, and in Nannyville. Churchmen are schooled in morality to know what is right and what is wrong and are enjoined to work for justice. I was always taught that the job of the preacher is to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable. The Church herself has grown much too comfortable in this society where inequality and injustice are woven into the very fabric of society. Indeed, in some cases the Church has been co-opted into reproducing the inequality, and nowhere is this truer than in the delivery of educational services.
As we prepare for changes in political leadership in both major parties, it seems that the more things change, the more they remain the same. The way forward to progress is clear. Some one of the major players has to stand up and break the chains of complicity. As unlikely as it may seem, the honest politicians we hear exist could step out and separate themselves from the corruption of their colleagues. Or it could be the private sector who finds their consciences, and could step out and say that they will give no more donations until and unless political corruption is cleaned up; but then this must be preceded by moral reawakening among the private sector, which does not seem to be happening.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist, and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
