Arnold Bertram, ContributorWE ARE at present in the middle of a full-blown debate on whether or not an economy that continues to run a budget deficit, faces demands for major increases in public sector wages, the imminent collapse of the sugar industry and a major energy crisis can afford the US$105 million capital investment to prepare the country for hosting Cricket World Cup with the expectation of only US$9 million from gate receipts.
The timing of the debate can hardly be understood since the decision by CARICOM Prime Ministers to offer the region as the venue for Cricket World Cup was taken some five years ago. A local organising committee was formed in 2003 and the packages for each participating territory announced in July/2004. The fact that Jamaica's responsibilities include the opening
ceremony and the semi-final games has been public knowledge for some time. We have already spent much of the US$58 million allocated for the construction of a new sports facility in Trelawny and the comprehensive refurbishment of Sabina Park.
SERVICES FINANCED
In addition, US$22 million is being spent on providing the services such as health, security, and transportation required for this prestigious event. The final US$25 million has been earmarked for improvements to the city's infrastructure and beautification of the capital city, where the semi-finals will be played in front of 600 journalists and thousands of visitors, and where the reputation of the country hangs precariously on the success or failure of the event.
As the debate rages many are convinced that even if the show goes on, given the financial constraints and the scope of work, nine months is not enough time to transform the old city to the point where the thousands of visitors will have such an experience as to make them repeat visitors or investors. It will also be just as challenging for the hundreds of local entrepreneurs to capitalise on the opportunity of a lifetime to successfully expand 'Brand Jamaica'.
Others argue with equal conviction that hosting the Cricket World Cup is the best idea since sliced bread, and a most exciting prospect which has pride of place in the cradle of new ideas, not the home of lost causes. They are sure that this is the last opportunity to launch and sustain a comprehensive development of Kingston, without which the national economy will never be robust. As far as they are concerned, we have no option but to mobilise the entire nation to exploit this grand opportunity.
WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP?
It seems that the Executive Director of the Local Organising Committee, Robert Bryan, has been left virtually on his own to explain to an increasingly sceptical country why it is in Jamaica's best interest that the games go on. The Minister of Finance, speaking on the subject in Parliament, limited himself to a brief statement of revenues and expenditure in a manner which suggested that this was not his brainchild.
However, while other members of the Cabinet have a major contribution to make to the success of the event, it is at the desk of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller that this buck stops. She shares with her CARICOM colleagues the primary regional responsibility, and with the portfolios of Development and Sports in the Office of the Prime Minister she can provide the example for the rest of the Cabinet to emulate.
THE TRAVAIL OF KINGSTON
By the end of the eighteenth century, Kingston had emerged as the commercial capital of Britain's richest colony. By the emancipation of slavery in 1838, it was already in a decline which would continue unrelieved for more than a century. The fire of 1843 destroyed a substantial portion of the city, and the cholera epidemic which broke out seven years later decimated one-third of the city's population. Hence, when W.G. Sewell, an American journalist, visited the island in 1860 his impressions of Kingston were of a city in decline "where money has been made ... is now used up and cast aside as useless."
The report of the Moyne Commission after the 1938 rebellion shows in no uncertain terms the continued physical and moral decline of Kingston, as well as the extent to which the majority of its citizens was reduced to poverty and diseases.
Then came a decade of sustained development, between the destruction wrought by Hurricane Charlie in 1951 and the preparations for independence in 1962, which breathed new life in the old capital. Norman Manley and Hugh Foot were the architects of a period of sustained economic growth, improvements in social services and constitutional advance.
The golden age of tourism which emerged in the 1950s was certainly evident in the capital city. By the end of the decade the in-crowd were to be found at Victoria Pier on a Saturday afternoon, dancing to Kes Chin and the Souvenirs, while the Pantomime and visiting cultural delegations played to packed houses at the Ward Theatre.
Those with deeper pockets dined upstairs Nathan's on King Street or in neighbouring China Town. Cricket lovers watched their favourite Senior Cup team at Kingston Cricket Club, Melbourne, Railway, Kensington or Lucas. There was also the annual 'Cross the Harbour' race from Victoria Pier to Gunboat Beach, in waters that were certainly not the environmental nightmare that they are today
'Jolly Joseph', the trademark of the publicly-owned bus company, provided comfortable transportation for the city's commuters, and there was always the railway for those who wanted to go out of town.
PROGRESS
However, it was in the fields of education and training that the most significant progress was made, which underpinned material progress. Secondary enrolment moved from 2 per cent in 1952 to 11 per cent by independence, while the quality of education was maintained in multi-racial school populations, where Jamaican and international teachers ensured
relevance and competence. Bishop Gibson at Kingston College set the standard for a whole generation of school principals, who made the education of the young their personal responsibility. It was in this environment that O.G. 'Collie' Smith, a young, Christian and outstanding cricketer, born and nurtured in Western Kingston, emerged as a folk hero in the old city.
HOW PARTISAN POLITICS UNDERDEVELOPED KINGSTON
Kingston was brought to its present state in the first two decades of independence by deliberate political action. It was as a direct result of the conscription of the urban poor into political militias for the building of political garrisons that the gun became the weapon of choice in the capital city. Whereas in 1960 there were 19 casualties caused by firearms, by the elections of 1967 this figure reached an amazing 202. Between 1976 and 1980, as a result of sustained political warfare, it is estimated that "1,400 fled downtown Kingston ... 21,000 were deprived of shelter ... and 4,000 buildings and residences were destroyed". (A Master Plan for the Redevelopment of Downtown Kingston,1992).
By this time, the middle and upper classes had moved their places of residence, their places of work and their entertainment and shopping away from the urban poor of downtown Kingston.
With the depopulation of the city, cricket went into decline. Melbourne Cricket Club moved uptown, and the new communities which sprung up around Lucas and Kensington never developed the same feeling for 'the fine old game.' None of the new uptown housing estates had a cricket field, and as if to confirm the decline, the first fourteen matches played by Jamaica immediately after independence were all lost.
REDEVELOPMENT NEEDED
There can be no doubt that Kingston is badly in need of redevelopment. There are no significant investments slated for Kingston comparable to those on the north and south coasts. Such is the depreciation of the value of life coupled with the growth of criminal and antisocial behaviour that it is now referred to as one of the murder capitals of the world. We have had a redevelopment plan for Kingston in every decade since independence, and a lot of concrete has been poured in an effort to make the city look modern, as we continue to confuse modernity with development.
The present levels of human resource development are incapable of sustaining any of the development initiatives under way. Every new project requires major additional investment in security or run the risk of vandalism, and the physical infrastructure for Cricket World Cup will be no different. Simultaneously, we must expand economic opportunities and take steps to modify behaviour patterns.
The development of Port Royal as a port of call is non-negotiable and only the removal of the prison from Central Kingston will modify the criminal-based social traffic that its presence encourages. Just think what a difference a university campus would make.
We will have to break radically with the thinking of the past forty years if we are to succeed in using the opportunities presented by Cricket World Cup to create the cultural and economic base for the redevelopment of Kingston.
Arnold Bertram, historian and former parliamentarian, is current chairman of Research and Product Development Ltd. Email redev@cwjamaica.com.
