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Lambert Brown, Guest Columnist
IT SEEMS the Jamaican media have somehow conspired to underreport or suppress the recent statesman-like action of Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados.
At a time when we here in Jamaica are discussing whether paying over $100,000 (Jamaican) per night for a hotel room for our Prime Minister to eat, sleep and greet, Mr. Arthur is showing why Barbados is making progress and Jamaica is failing and trying to play catch-up.
On Emancipation Day this year, he announced to his nation that he was turning down his proposed 22.5 per cent salary increase. What an excellent case of leadership by example. What a great plug for decent values and good attitude on the part of a leader.
In Jamaica, workers and consumers are always the ones called on to make sacrifices, whether through wage guidelines, wage restraint Memoranda of Understanding or massive prices, rates, fares and tax increases.
In Barbados, bus fares have not been increased in 10 years according to their Minister of Transport. There is no cost sharing in health and education. Their dollar is strong, their economy is growing and they don't have to face and endure the murderous crime rates we do on a daily basis.
NO LEGACY-BUILDING
Yet despite this, Prime Minister Arthur told his people, "All of us have to rally to the cause of making Barbados more productive and if there is a sacrifice that has to be carried, the best person to carry that sacrifice is that person to whom the people of the country have entrusted their affairs".
From these simple but straight-to-the-point words, one sees a caring and honest leader, praiseworthily leading by example.
Absent is a desire for self-aggrandisement and legacy-building while ever present is an abiding love for country over party and self.
Clearly, Owen Arthur, a former Jamaican public servant, learnt well the Kennedy edict "ask not what your country can do for you but what can you do for your country".
Here we have a neighbouring Caribbean country whose Prime Minister studied and worked in Jamaica leading a country that is making strong progress. If Barbados can be a successful nation, why is Jamaica failing so badly?
To me, the answer lies in the failing of our people to be the masters of our political process, rather than being contented with being "hewers of wood and drawers of water for our leader".
We are too unquestioning of our leaders, most of whom have no vision of where the country should be going. In fact, most of them enter politics for what they can get out of it. They cherish party and personal loyalty over performance and a more productive country.
It is my belief that the governing PNP, has developed an ostrich-like ideological position that says corruption does not exist.
Speaking at a PNP NEC meeting in March 2002, then General Secretary Maxine Henry-Wilson explained that Prime Minister P. J. Patterson, in addressing his party faithful, made "a distinction between acts of inefficiencies and mismanagement on the one hand and corruption on the other".
Again this year in response to Bruce Golding's budget speech with its blistering attack on governmental corruption, it was the same head-in-sand approach from the Prime Minister.
"Much of what is being mooted as corrupt really relates more to inefficiency in management ...", he is reported as responding.
I have heard the same nonsensical and cynical line being carried by other members of the Cabinet including some of the presidential contenders.
I am not surprised at this approach by the Government, after all it helps them to win election even if the country has to be constantly making the painful correction, after 'running with it'.
The private sector leaders have remained too silent in the face of this condoning approach to corruption by our leaders. I am yet to hear any private sector leader criticise the way the Government set up the PRIDE programme.
This is not a criticism of the concept of helping the poor, but instead the strategy of enriching the greedy and party 'generals of the street'. In my view, PRIDE was deliberately formulated so that it could get around the rigorous demands of the Contractor General Act.
Often, I am asked if it was incompetence on the part of the Cabinet with so many lawyers in it, not to have spotted the inevitable consequences of corruption which followed under PRIDE. In addition, I am also asked: Was it complicity or was it mere innocent negligence on the part of the Cabinet?
To those questions, I usually answer by asking the questioner to "shut your eye for a moment, think about it and accept the first answer that comes to mind".
ROBS THE BUDGET
Corruption robs the budget of resources that can help the poor people to live a better life. It makes less money available for national security, health and education among other things. The same happens when we choose to sleep in a $100,000 per night bedroom.
I am happy that despite the spin doctors, the Jamaican people are gradually realising the truth and are disagreeing with our leaders. In the February 2005 Don Anderson Poll, more than 90 per cent of the respondents said that corruption had increased over the last five years. I can't recall any other question being asked by any pollster on which such a large majority concurred. In fact, the people said the public sector led by this Government accounted for 70 per cent of the corruption.
It is time for our leaders to catch up with our people. They can begin by learning from and following the path of Owen Arthur, lead by example, make the sacrifice at the top of the stream and the rest of the population will follow. Condone corruption by calling it inefficiency and inefficiencies will indeed be your true legacy.
Lambert Brown is first vice-president of the University and Allied Workers' Union and can be contacted at labpoyh@yahoo.com.
