Amina Blackwood meeksYOU KNOW, one very funny thing about this cat-fight over the proposed Caribbean Court of Justice is that it represents one cat-fight too many. I am sick up to here, with politicians squaring off over this or that thing at the first chance they get, like schoolboys out in the playground playing "hot patty". I do not care who badder dan who. I really care to know if they ever stop to ask themselves where our schoolboys get the idea that squaring off is the latest game to play, dat foot pan chair an hand pan hip ready for the draw, and threats to create no ends of scandals and mayhem if they do not get their way is model behaviour. Where do our children learn that in the end, winning is the only thing that matters and winning means making sure that your opponent's nose is rubbed so hard in the ground that the nose itself is barely a memory?
So gentlemen on both sides of the House and those waiting in the wings, kindly stop it. It is not funny anymore and when you scratch and hiss about everything like that many of us really do not know which hissing to take seriously. And that brings us to another funny thing about the Caribbean Court of Justice. That is, that when all the fur is settled somebody might just relent and change their mind. Like in the case of Agana Barrett or Street People Enquiry or Prison Beatings or anything else which you care to name. You see after a while it takes on the tone of the school's debating society. It does not mean anything, we do it because we enjoy a good debate but nothing serious rests upon it. See me dying trial? You just do not know when to trust a politician.
Except, of course, the Caribbean Court of Justice goes far beyond the debating skills and posturing of politicians and people and groups with hidden political agendas. After months of wrangling it is down to this: "Hello Jamaica, we are not opposed in principle. The concept is really a good one. Our concern is that it should be so implemented that no Government in the future can tamper with it".
Draw brakes. It is not entirely impossible that a future PNP Government would overturn decisions taken by this or any PNP Government in the past but it is a little unlikely. So are we to understand that the JLP's concern is really that the present administration should do everything in its power to protect the Jamaican people and their institutions against the whims and fancies of whatever JLP Government may be brought into power? If that is the case then the PNP and the people should sit up and listen, and act. If the concept is good and good for reasons of strengthening our independence, advancing the integration movement, securing ourselves in a world of globalisation whatever that means then why aren't all heads concentrated on how to ensure that it is done right?
We are now down to a square-off about whose proposals were not accepted as if proposals are commands, divine edicts. By their very definition proposals do not have to be accepted and therefore their rejection cannot be sufficient grounds for fingers on the trigger, so to speak. Nor can we take someone to court to compel them to do something that they have no obligation to do in the first place.
If all this is about showing good faith and advancing a process of good governance how come we have managed to whip the country up into such a frenzy about legal and constitutional breaches to now come to a consensus that nothing would be breached by removing our connection to the great colonial mother power? Funny how we have existed all this while without once hearing a murmur about discomfort about the fact that any simple majority could end our association with the apron strings. Maybe because we had not contemplated that we would dare to do it and create something that in concept, is good for us.
And here is the rub; the masses of the people still have to take the word of a few for it. The word of the educated, of the wealthy, of those who sit deep in the corridors of power, supposedly on behalf of the people. Very little meaningful effort has been made to educate the people about what is intended and why, in this fundamentally "good concept", and even less has been done to pretend that the people will be represented in the configuration of this important "concept".
The very people who are asked to speak in a referendum before or after the fact, do not have a clue that beyond that no mechanisms are contemplated to secure and maintain their active participation, represent their voices. That has to mean manipulation of the uneducated, the uninformed to ensure that one side or other of the informed and educated wins.
So please stop it. This cat-fight and others whose outcomes are based on the ignorance of the masses and playing them as pawns in the interest of partisan politics. If we really believe any of the wonderful things we just uttered about the example set by Sir Florizel about what is appropriate conduct in the interest of Jamaica, now is the time to show me, not tell me.
Amina Blackwood Meeks is a communications specialist.
