Dawn RitchTHERE IS something odd about the air in Jamaica that makes us want to swing on a scaffolding as soon as we see one. There's no wall we wouldn't lean on, no seat we wouldn't take. Doesn't matter what the purpose of the scaffolding, nor whose seat it is, boundaries are made to be broken.
This national disposition in the local population was given free rein by Michael Manley in the 1970s. He declared there were no bastards, made a law to say so, and has largely been successful in consigning the phrase 'out of wedlock' to the dustbin. That was when the bastards started to take over.
FIRST TIME AROUND
Unable to speak a word of patois, Michael Manley wrote about 'Struggle in the Periphery', but didn't mean it to apply to himself. He had hoped to be a David to the world's Goliath, but ended up only bankrupting the country with the posse. That was the first time around.
Nevertheless, a delight in freedom from social and legal restrictions actually realised has never left us. So every lamp post is a place from which to cogitate on the wonder of it all. And every seat in parliament a place from which to expound upon the so-called 'search for solutions'.
THE GREATEST EXPONENT
In this regard, the Most Honourable Prime Minister P.J. Patterson is the greatest exponent of them all. Manley primed the citizenry with an interest in politics and concepts of nation-building out of all proportion to their worth, but Patterson elaborated on this by establishing committees in every nook and cranny of the island to examine every nut and bolt. There were new public policies, to say nothing of new legislation constantly promulgated, until the only thing left for the Jamaican people was to hope to retire safely to their beds. They were then astonished afterwards to find those beds not so safe at all.
The mayhem which overtook Spanish Town last week is therefore only the outcome when the great and the good believe that all they have do is write reports, instead of taking timely action. The search for consensus is, they claim, an integral part of the process of the searching for solutions, as though centuries of British common law and adherence to long-standing civil service procedures count for nothing.
This pseudo-intellectual garbage going on all the time is but a web designed to deceive. No fool himself, Patterson is more often out of the country, than in. Indeed, although widespread rioting was erupting in the old capital of the island, he still took himself off to Brazil. He's gone there no doubt to bring back 'goodies' sure to prove as interesting as the interchange between two women and an adolescent male cashier. The two women said some men are supposed to get 'jackets'. The cashier was giggling nervously. I asked the women why, and they said that men don't look after their natural-born children, so everyone of them that can be given a 'jacket' should get one. I asked the young fellow what he thought of that, and he replied he entirely agreed with them because his own father was just such a boops.
I took my change, and left because I couldn't bother to tell him that the real boops was Michael Manley. Prior to his coming to office, most people were still born out-of-wedlock, but the vast majority of them were far from being bastards. They looked after each other, sought an education, strove to speak standard English and were unembarrassed if it was fractured. Today, the prevailing ethos among young men is "You si me? Mi get five pickney."
NO CONCERN
That is something that the men will have to sort out by themselves, and I don't think Education Minister Maxine Henry-Wilson should concern herself with that. Such a father can't even give box-juice to his child, much less an education. So he's no concern of hers.
Eventually, they all become a problem of the Security Minister Dr. Peter Phillips. He will carefully mouth the platitudes given him by the People's National Party, while allowing his security forces to read the beatitudes to people in their houses, and on the streets.
The root of the problem is a cultural collapse set in train by a PNP Prime Minister in the early 1970s, and compounded by another one in the 1990s. Patterson told the people that he cared, and asked them what they thought of the big questions of the day. But he deliberately and calculably presided over the fire sale of the nation's assets, and the monumental waste of taxpayer money and borrowed funds. Our substance has been so completely wasted that today we look to wait upon the state for everything, like featherless birds in a nest.
Sitting in his counting house, Finance Minister, Dr. Omar Davies, is faced with two piles of paperwork on his desk. One pile is the 'irredeemables' as he once famously called them, or poor people, and the other is 'redeemables', all the money he's borrowed here and from all over the world. If he sweats all the time, or touches his face too often with his forefinger, it's all understandable. He sits in a bedlam, and allows 'Jah Kingdom' to burn.
The crisis in the country continues unabated, primarily because our citizens love excitement too much, and always have time for 'mix-up'. Well, even excitement can grind to a halt like a wringer run out of victims. Then the only 'mix-up' left will be all the studies and reports that have been made on us and stored at the University of the West Indies, of interest only to a few faded academics sure to make a continuing industry of adding to it.
