Dawn Ritch, Contributor
THIS IS not a country which values achievement greatly, unless it's caused by air in the windpipe.
Jamaica is the graveyard of champions, and Kingston a town without pity. As soon as the ink was dry on my last column I had a call alleging the most monstrous things against 'Butch' Stewart, which are as illogical as they are corrupt.
But I'd heard them before. Nobody seems to mind repeating them, nor really cares whether the allegations are true or not. It's Air Jamaica now, but in 1996 it was Don Crawford and Century National Bank. Then the following year it was Dr. Paul Chen Young and Eagle. That was the decline of the financial sector. Now this is the decline of the aviation sector. Funny how it's always the fault of the private investors, and the government never has anything to do with the failure.
This Government is a master at the art of propaganda. As soon as it is forced to admit privately that things don't look so good the PNP government launches a whisper campaign against the Jamaican investors involved. That's some nerve really. This government accusing others outside of greed, arrogance and corruption. But so goes the glory of the world.
What dismays me is how credulous the public has become. Whole sectors are failing and it's always the fault of the people stupid enough to invest in them.
Never the contamination of failed economic policies rotting enterprise after enterprise. Billions of dollars of Jamaican taxpayer money is given away by the government to foreign businessmen, who can't even be said to have set up shop. Yet the resulting financial loss to taxpayers is laid down to "youthful exuberance" on the part of the minister responsible. And not a peep is heard from the verandahs, nor any of the private sector organisations that lie thick on the ground.
DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED
I am also deeply disappointed in the role of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in all of this. Not a word in defence of local investors in the financial sector.
Certainly none when it could have done any good, and now it doesn't matter. And now silence on Air Jamaica as well.
Nary a soul is prepared to say that neither a PNP government nor a JLP government should run Air Jamaica. And that when private investors lose their deposit because of the persecution and the wrong-headed economic strategies of the government, they're entitled not only to continue to enjoy their own good reputations, but financial restitution of some sort.
The record of this government has been actively to encourage Jamaicans to buy divested assets, make it impossible to succeed, withdraw them and sell them cheap to Trinidadians and Barbadians - in fact anybody but a Jamaican.
People are out of work in this country because the government in its jaded opinion has decided that there are no "fit and proper" Jamaicans capable of employing them. And the silence of those who remain has been bought for a few airline tickets, and public contracts and commissions.
Anybody who's been around long enough can remember how badly the airline was run when it was in public hands. Strikes, late departures and all the rest of it. I am therefore in favour of an agreed on-going subsidy to the airline, even while the private sector retains majority ownership. Because they do it better, and the airline has an indispensable role to play in the economic development of Jamaica. If we were land-locked no case could be made for public subsidy.
Is the government so jealous of private success that they will give no one a loan guarantee except their own bureaucratic and environmentally dangerous public institutions? In one case the Jamaican investor in a strategic industry didn't even want a loan guarantee, just a standby guarantor and the Government refused to do it. Yet they make a fire-sale of the country's assets to foreigners, and give them clean balance sheets to boot. Only a moron couldn't make a success out of that.
Quite frankly, it seems to me to be the soul of generosity that members of the Jamaican private sector continue to fund the activities of the PNP and the JLP. Because neither has done a thing for the private sector since 1990. Were I a captain of industry, I'd tell the political parties to seek funding from Trinidad and Barbados.
MONEY IN OVERSEAS BANK
When Jamaican politicians don't stand shoulder to shoulder with Jamaican investors, they ought not to be entitled to any consideration whatsoever. Yet they dare call into question the patriotism of business people who, instead of putting their money in a bank abroad, made the mistake of investing here.
It seems that while nobody was looking socialism took over the commanding heights of the Jamaican economy as well as contaminated the Jamaica Labour Party.
With the carrot of preferential treatment and the stick of intimidation, it has silenced an entire population. And every time the country's financial crisis deepens the government finds a new batch of businessmen to blame. Socialism has been so successfully grafted unto the island that we can no longer recognise blatant injustice unless it's meted out to the black and the poor.
Politicians will continue to talk windily about economic growth and job creation. This will never happen as long as they continue to make the businessman a legal target whenever they can, and damn his achievements with faint praise.
Until then politicians have to continue to recognise the area don and the drug don by attending their funerals. And be begged for money every time they step out on the street. If we continue along these lines we will soon get to the stage where a job seeker's resume will read "Good with people. Used to be a gunman".
