More leadership on corruption
published:
Friday | February 22, 2008
The Editor, Sir:
I am personally disappointed with the People's National Party's (PNP) leadership on the topic of corruption in general and the recent incidents of alleged corruption. When the new general secretary came to the fore, we thought this would be a jolt of leading from the front, but yet again we saw a watered-down, political balancing equation of talking out of both sides of one's mouth - indecisive.
This indecisiveness goes to the heart of identifying good leaders, and for most of us, the corruption issue is one of the simplest any leader could be asked to draw a line under, yet we see dilly-dallying and muddying of issues when strong leadership is required from both senior and junior representatives - insistent on pulling the wool over the electorate eyes. This leads me to question the judgement and independence of our parliamentarians especially the new entrants - do they bring any initiative as far as nation-building is concerned to Parliament, or are they just surrogates for attracting votes and electability? I find this troubling for two reasons:
a) I believe there is a direct relationship between corruption at the top and at the bottom of the Jamaican society. The longer it takes for the Jamaica Labour Party and the PNP to signal an end to corruption at the top, the more our values and morals at the base of society will be eaten away, leaving us with a society that is murderous and ungovernable. The pretences that exist between politicians that everything is 'kosher' only serve to prolong a 'business as usual' attitude with grandstanding for the next five years if the United Nations peacekeepers are not in by then.
Jamaica needs turnaround agents
b) Second, this might sound strange, but the Jamaica of today doesn't only need to attract investments, but in my opinion, needs to attract decent, highly skilled turnaround agents. These are out there in abundance just 'waiting to exhale'. It is clear that the Jamaica project is in a very bad condition, but on the flip side, there are opportunities to be exploited. However, this won't happen fully until we signal the change of the famous slogan that reads 'Jamaica - No Problem' to 'Jamaica - Zero Tolerance on Corruption' and mean every single letter of it.
Last, but not least, we should all pray for the current government.
