Our country is in deep trouble. Our political leaders are more about protecting the wealth and privilege of the few and to maintain their grip on political power. This attitude and learned behavior since independence have stifle the true expression of our people desire to be participant in solving our country myriad of problems.the political system, modeled off our colonial masters does not fit into our cultural psychology and experience. It is based on a slave/master mentality of subservience and elitism, crafty practices by our tribalist parties, the peoples national party and the Jamaica labor party. Lets use real life experience, Mr. Golding could not defend his constituency when they came under fire due to his allegiance to his financial backers,and the fact that he did not live there!! That explain the love for our people!!
The previous prime minister, Percival Patterson sold most of our prize asset to foreign entities without a nationwide discussion of the issues, ignoring the fact that this draconian policy have never work in any third wold country and did not give us the majority share so we can determine the best strategy mix for our country. Where are we now? we are one of the most highly indebted country in the world, and one of the few where seventy five percent of our debt are owed to local entity,over sixty percent of our people live on squatters land, majority of our people have mental issues,our minister of labor duties is to export Jamaicans abroad(farmers) and the intelligencia migrate to the USA after they are trained by us(brain drain), a high unemployment rate,especially among the youths, a high murder rate and rampant prostitution of our young girls though the proliferation of massage parlors.
The solution begins with the acknowledgement that we cannot pay that debt and our people cannot take anymore layoff and price increases.what the government should have done is to tell our local creditors that they need a moratorium on debt payment for ten years but they could not have done that because they govern only for a particular set of Jamaicans who own most of the businesses and are brokers for multinational corporations in Jamaica which take their orders from the master of the universe, the united states of America.
We are therefore not a sovereign country because we would be punish if we do not obey, the Michael Manley experience was a lesson in international relations. we need a memorandum of understanding from the private sector!! The government of Jamaica (both PNP and JLP) always ask for one from the workers,what about the private sector? They should step forward and show their patriotism by agreeing to freezing of payment so the government can use that fund and invest in our social, agricultural, housing, education and road improvements. This would reduce the unemployment rate and the crime rate significantly. Our next challenge is our political architecture, it must change. Amendment must be made to our existing constitution wherein our public bodies must be given statutory powers to effectively carry out their duties without influence of the two political tribes. The judiciary, the police commission, the electoral commission, and the department of education. The electoral commission would be allowed to set the date for election,have their own funding to conduct the election, have their own security apparatus to protect their duties in protecting our citizens rights in casting their ballots and to elect their own commissioner. These are all standard act of a democratic society.
Parliament must act to establish these simply rules of a governing democracy within a six months period. our movement call for the re-nationalization of our national asset with our government having a majority share, a freezing of debt payments to our local creditors to use the funds for development, using agriculture as our vehicle for local consumption and as a foreign exchange earner, widening of our trading opportunities to include the emerging economic power centers and to control all inflow of foreign currency into our country. these are some of the objectives we will be advocating for.