THE EDITOR, Sir:
I FEEL compelled to respond to Professor Don Robotham's article in The Sunday's Gleaner entitled 'Don't Dump Omar'.
Dr. Robotham wants to steal the people's thunder by continuing to pontificate the nonsense from the 'intellectual ghetto' that Omar Davies is doing a wonderful job and that the people are lucky to have him as Finance Minister and therefore Madame Portia should keep him on in that capacity.
The people want Portia Simpson Miller because they want fundamental changes. They, like Don Robo-tham, have realised that Omar Davies was one of the greatest contributors to the enormous pain and problems that have afflicted the society over the last several years. The difference is that the people do not believe that it would have been worse without him.
Where is the empirical evidence provided by Robotham to prove that this would be so? Omar's policies have been catastrophic to the economy and to the hopes and aspirations of the Jamaican people.
The professor's desire to sweep the failures of his former colleague under the carpet cannot be hidden. The attempt to cover up and to save face for the UWI is not going down well with the populace.
They are in no mood to accept excuses from any Ph.Ds. or any more committees, and that is why they have decided to go against the UWI mafia.
Where were Omar Davies' policies of production and employment evident in the economy? The economics of mopping up liquidity at high interest rates, while creating more at the end of its maturity, is the reason why we have had the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, since the abolition of slavery.
It is Omar's policies why we have had the highest health care cost in our nation's history. It is Omar's policies why we have had the highest cost and yet the worst education system in our nation's history.
It is his policies why we are paying 62 cents out of every dollar that we earn for debt repayment, and it is his policies why we have been deprived of the resources to fight crime, which has resulted in the highest murder rate in the country's history and the worst in the world.
Don Robotham and Omar Davies know that the country is 'irredeemable' under Omar's leadership at the Ministry of Finance and what the 'intellectual ghetto' needs to do, if it has the capacity, is to study the total impact that Omar's wretched policies have done to damage the psyche of the Jamaican poor and once-rising middle class. The historical perspective to the problem provided by the professor should be dumped, and so should Omar.
I am, etc.,
SHAWN JOHNSON
jamaicanshawn@yahoo.com
Mandeville
Via Go-Jamaica
