Dawn Ritch, Columnist

I must confess I watch the preparations for World Cup Cricket with some anxiety.

Quite apart from praying that the new stands won't collapse under the weight of the fans because of faulty cement, the verges and sidewalks in this country haven't been tended since Edward Seaga was prime minister. And that was a long time ago.

Then we mowed the verges and enjoyed highways bordered by flowering plants. Domestic garbage islandwide was collected on a regular basis. Then prime minister Seaga even restored historic Devon House. But that was before 1989.

So it didn't matter to me whether or not he was warm, nor even polite. He ran an orderly government. That was before the word 'governance' came to be understood. Since then, everybody has dutifully practised how to say it, but forgotten about the art.

From Sir Alexander Bustamante, through Sir Donald Sangster, Hugh Shearer and Edward Seaga, prime ministers of the Jamaica Labour Party were known for their plain speaking, results, and a fondness for gardens.

Bruce Golding wants to become a JLP prime minister, but he's anything but plain speaking himself. I am not quite sure how he defines results, because it appears he'd prefer to just listen to himself talk. And since he won't get after any of his mayors and councillors to produce cleanliness in townships, he can't have much interest in gardens either.

The JLP mayors don't even try to keep the bush out of the roads. And you'd have thought that was part of their DNA. It shouldn't matter that Mr. Golding is suspect, having recently returned to the JLP from founding another political party with alien policies.

Cutlass and shovel debate

Ever since the new leadership of the JLP took control of the parish councils in March 2005, it's been an ongoing debate about who's to pick up a cutlass and shovel, and where the money is to come from. Nevertheless, everybody can find a video camera to film the same pictures of garbage in the same gullies and ask the same questions all over again. It demonstrates that government by soap box does not work. His Worship, the JLP Mayor Desmond McKenzie, must therefore be mightily relieved that 10,000 Christians have volunteered to clean up the island for World Cup Cricket.

I doubt that government by contractor general works either, but I can't blame Seaga for thinking that it might be beneficial. That was his legislation while prime minister in 1983, having come to office in 1980. He then proceeded to run the country unsmiling like a corporation sole, and nothing was heard of the contractor general.

Today, he is a public celebrity, threatening to take virtually the entire public sector to court because they didn't submit reports to him by the end of last year. This is in a context where the public sector can't pay its statutories, and the whole of Jamaica has grown up in bush, while everyone writes reports, or is called upon to write them.

By the time the JLP mayors and the PNP candidates have finished working out their photo opportunities, World Cup Cricket will be long over. At least 10,000 Christians have stepped in.

The cricket tourists who don't get malaria, leptospirosis, get caught in a falling structure or by 'macca' bush, will sit in traffic for two hours in the blue plumes of vehicular exhausts, horns blaring loudly in their ears. When they finally make it to their rooms, they will be kept up all night by reggae music. When Jamaicans want to celebrate, we take captives.

It's not for want of trying, but World Cup Cricket doesn't resemble a tourism opportunity to me, but a looming embarrassment and catastrophe. Matters are not helped because cricket itself leaves me cold. It's like fishing. One waits a long time for something to happen, and then it doesn't.

Nothing happens under the new leadership of the JLP either. The JLP parish councils have preoccupied themselves with contracts, press releases and squabbles. They have been of no assistance to the cleanliness of the island, which is what they are paid to be.

The People's National Party, apparently stung by the criticism that they're unable to maintain anything much less a garden, created Emancipation Park. But this is a mere showpiece, because the rest of the island remains mired in unremitting squalor.

It was under P. J. Patterson that these things took place. He only built highways. At least we should be thankful that he already contracted out the verge maintenance for a lifetime to the foreign operators of the toll roads. But already smoke thick like fog has caused numerous pileups. It's a PNP malaise that it can maintain nothing, even when it's not trying.

class coup

Of course, I think that Mrs. Simpson Miller is unlike other PNP prime ministers. She reached that office by initiating a class coup in the governing party. Politicians from middle-class backgrounds tend to be intellectuals who find it hard to make decisions except by consensus. Those from working-class backgrounds are prepared to plant a garden even in a few old rubber tyres, just to give themselves a lift. Gardens are one of the natural interests of any civilised person.

This is what worries me about Madam Prime Minister. She might try to plant shrubs on the verges and sidewalks before World Cup Cricket. But not even she can get them to bloom without water. And there's no water to keep it up anyway, so Mrs. Simpson Miller might as well not bother try.

If by some chance she succeeds, there's going to be a huge public outcry on every radio station. Angry people will be calling in, demanding to know why plants have water, but children in inner-city communities do not. The Patterson legacy hangs about her neck like a millstone.

Better to uphold her party's tradition, now ably aided and abetted by the new JLP leadership, of keeping Jamaica looking like a dump. Just put a torch to the verges as is now being done, and suit up everybody so that they can chop back the macca bush on the main roads every 10 years with great ceremony.

Anything else would be a culture shock of no mean order. Already some people are grumbling that when an attempt is made to clean up Jamaica, it's either that the Queen is coming, or some world event, and that the residents don't count. Every kind of expert can be found for every subject in order to nitpick it to death. But none can be found to pick up the litter and the garbage on an everyday basis.

Cricket can be so unrelievedly boring, that the tourists might have the time to look around. Woe betide us if they do! Nevertheless, I wish us all the best of British luck.