Dawn RitchTHE ECONOMIST has recently reported that Jamaica has the highest murder rate of any place in the world. We have surpassed Colombia, South Africa and places at war.
The Most Honourable P. J. Patterson hopes to be remembered as 'Mr. Infrastructure'. He certainly has created the structure that enabled Jamaica to become a criminal enterprise. From the paradise of everyone's dreams, we now rank at the top of their list of nightmares. But the terror is our own, and waved off by both this Prime Minister, and his grinning Minister of Finance.
Patterson should have left office from the time of the PNP Conference in September. But since the international announcement of the nadir of our existence was made only a month later, it was curiously gracious of him to stay on while the news sinks in.
In the middle of the last eight straight days of rain, the Most Honourable Prime Minister, therefore, chose to have a broadcast on murder. He said he had another plan, when most people had already lost count of all the ones he announced before. He also said he had a plan for more jobs in inner-city communities.
PLANS AND PROMISES
I doubt that anyone is interested in any more of Mr. Pattersons's plans and promises, millennium or otherwise. Nothing comes of his plans nor the
thinking of his advisers, above all Dr. Davies. Billions of dollars are wasted minutely, but we still have neither education nor jobs. We kissed security goodbye long ago, but Patterson has no shame, and wants to give us yet more plans.
In a spirit of the purest self-regard, Omar Davies has offered himself as successor. He beggared a country and its people in order to build US$2 billion of borrowed money in net international reserves. It seems that inflation has caught up with the price of betrayal. It no longer costs 30 pieces of silver.
MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
Not even in the murder capital of the world should a Judas become prime minister. Such a fate did not even befall the Jews. Pontius Pilate washed his hands of it, and P. J. Patterson is leaving soon.
May Omar Davies go with him, and every member of the Cabinet, save Portia Simpson Miller and Bobby Pickersgill. She needs to get to grips with the beast that is devouring us, because no one else will. All they want to do is eat grapes and drink wine.
It is imperative, therefore, that the selection for president of the People's National Party take place this year, and not next. The PNP members of parliament who have gone behind Dr. Peter Phillips had best sit on their hands. It is not likely that he will sit in a Portia Simpson Miller Cabinet. He represents everything that's old in the regime.
Nor are any deals likely to be struck with Omar Davies, or anyone else. The country wants Portia Simpson Miller and the rest of the Cabinet to go to hell. We want no part of them, and unfairly yoked herself, she will not yoke us to them.
The Jamaican dollar fell to its lowest level in history last Wednesday. It was J$64.50 to US$1. When Patterson took charge 13 years ago, it was 22:1. Rapid devaluation followed.
So I don't know why he wants a memorial. Even if Highway 2000 is named after him, P. J. Patterson will always be known as the man who caused the death of the Jamaican dollar and the ruin of his people. We have no store of value, we have no jobs and we have turned to vicious crime against each other. That is the Prime Minister's legacy, so he'd best be gone. For the sake of the people Mr. Patterson, don't spare another thought for us, please.
Abandon hope of a victory parade around the island to celebrate your long tenure. It would be an insult to the
people of this country. Even comrades are suffering, because there's not enough pork to go around. Only very special people get to eat pork these days, and it's shared with a very few.
Do not inflict the taint of association upon any successor that you might have, above all not Mrs. Simpson Miller. I'm sure she's capable of finding someone else to hold her hand abroad. She may not even require it. No previous Jamaican prime minister ever has, so I see no reason why she should be any different. Indeed, for conviction and grace, only Sir Alexander Bustamante can rival Portia; she has star quality. Once prime minister, she may well excel Bustamante, and he was the founding father of Jamaica.
I think we're in for a treat if the PNP delegates select Mrs. Simpson Miller president and if the PNP MPs are unanimous in their acclamation of her as prime minister. The country has already decided that what it needs is a hugger, not a thinker. Damned be their policies that have brought us to destruction, murder, penury and disgrace.
Manifestos are hogwash.
As Simon Jenkins recently wrote in the Sunday Times about conservative party politics in Britain: "One message echoes across the political landscape this autumn. It is that personality
matters. Leadership is not about policy, but about performance."
Michael Portillo writing in the same publication on the same subject and in the same vein said "... niceness ... is not to be underestimated".
Mrs. Simpson Miller is very nice indeed. And there's nothing more important than the presentation of a party leader and prime minister. It gives one hope.
LOST IN SELF-INDULGENCE
She's far more pleasant than either Dr. Davies or Dr. Phillips. And there is
bitter medicine ahead, so I'd far rather take it from someone pleasant. She will get on with the job, instead of having press conferences like her rivals, and seeking coalitions, forming committees and making mendacious promises time after time all under the cloak of increasing governmental intellectualism, lost in a thicket of self-indulgence.
It remains to be seen whether or not their thick skulls can be made to absorb the latest international statistic about our island. It's official. Once a paradise, Jamaica is now ranked most murderous and the greatest hell on earth.
Under the circumstances, the immediate resignation of Jamaica's Prime Minister is totally in order. No more of his plans, no more of his committees, and above all, no more of his false
interest and concern. It's time for him to get out of the way.
