By Chester Burgess, Contributor
Burgess
PROMINENTLY PLACED in the Caspian Sea, half-way between Madagascar and Martinique, the island state of Decentia seemed poised for progress when on February 9, 1989 it received a major setback, somewhat akin in possible consequence to the terrorist strike in New York on September 11, 2001.
For on that day a new government was to take command of the country, a government contending that politics was a matter of struggle for scarce benefits and spoils and that the law was not a shackle, this to be followed by assertion through one of its functionaries that what was good for the party now in power was ipso facto good for the country.
For a short spell it seemed that there was no real danger of fallout: there was talk of values and attitudes and a promise of transparency in government, but this proved to be pure pretence all clothed in seductive eloquence. And so it came to pass that in time the government took the bull by the horns, declared that Decentia was not an appropriately descriptive name for the land they now ruled and caused the island to be renamed Scandalia.
Over and above the consequences of mismanagement of the economy, what with stagnation, job loss, foreign trade deterioration, debt overload and so on, and the breakdown of law and order that caused Scandalia to have one of the highest murder rates on earth, there was to emerge evidence that in the matter of financial administration there was not only error, understandable in an imperfect world, but deliberate manipulation of the nation's resources, call it taxpayers' money if you will, demonstrative of policy and practice that in other political contexts would cause heads to roll. But no heads roll in Scandalia, for, as one government personality put it, ordinary people don't know about these things - it is a case of "So what?" After all, likewise, ordinary people are not expected to know that a cess is the same as a tax.
Brought to light, causing widespread and indignant demand for explanation, has been a broad variety of situations, such as: over-payment of emoluments; contracts awarded without due process; over-expenditure on projects; contracts awarded to non-qualified performers; funds allocated to non-qualifying companies; contracts awarded to preferred parties irrespective of performance; government agencies not pay paying dues; the retention and misuse of statutory deductions, this detrimental to pensioners' rights.
As such situations surface there is resort to the launch of investigation or enquiry, but all sensible Scandalians know from experience that nothing will come of such exercises - they're merely face-saving manoeuvres. Inquiries into other matters have come and gone, with the situation no better off than before, and those in progress are expected to go that way. Perhaps the most illustrative case is that of a commission of enquiry currently looking into a July 2001 weekend of community violence in which the security-civilian kill score was 25 - 2: an enquiry headed by a chairman with an Old Testament name! He's been known to doze, no doubt expecting to benefit from slumber as Jacob did.
Today, words like fraud, scam, injustice and scandal as a matter of course, constitute much of the language of the people of Scandalia, uttered in an atmosphere charged with talk of corruption, and are recurring decimals in the media at home and abroad.
But the people running the country appear to be unperturbed, for not only is no one ever found to have misbehaved, seeming schoolboy exuberance or blind enthusiasm or unawareness being adduced and adjudged to be expected and forgivable, but they are prepared to proclaim total support for the responsible parties even before the results of enquiry or investigation are known. Current happenings all converge on the realisation that the present government knew what they were about when they name-changed from Decentia to Scandalia.
Chester Burgess is a director of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce.
