Hewitt

Dear Madam Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition:

I penned this letter on a long flight from Thailand to Jamaica. The long hours of flying forced me to think deeply about my homeland that I love so dearly. Let me begin by stating that I regard you as deeply committed and passionate leaders who have different ideas about how to run Jamaica that you both love.

This is our election year when the nation will decide which one of you will be entrusted with the awesome responsibility to lead this nation for the next five years. I do not doubt your sincerity for this task. However, there are deep reservations within the nation concerning the capacity of our current party political organisation to motivate and mobilise the people for the changes that are urgently needed to rescue our nation.

You have chosen your team of candidates for the next election and I need to tell you something about, them and your party. Deep down, Jamaicans are fed up with both parties. We have made great strides since Independence but we have severely limited our socio-economic growth because of divisive party politics. People believe that your parties look after their own interest before the nation?s. It is for this reason we must be concerned about the state of democracy in our beloved nation. We have become a nation of cynics, who are attracted to the distracted.

Disillusioned

We are fast becoming disillusioned with election because it appears that it does not change anything. The messages coming from the current crop of prospective candidates leave much to be desired and one wonders whether they are able to grasp the seriousness of the times and offer quality leadership that would help to heal the breach in the nation.

This election cannot be business as usual. People are longing for something more. They are not interested in the politics of re-runs. People need fresh voices of hope, not galvanised corpses! No amount of slick looks and slick talk will do it.

Death in this beloved nation can come in countless forms. A barbaric fate has befallen our homeland. The internecine violence that has enveloped our nation will not be solved by another crime plan. The roots of our untenable high murder rate are to be found in our socio-economic system that has historically accepted poor Jamaicans killing each other by whatever means! There is no national, uprising of righteous anger when poor young men die because they are socially regarded as expendable. The nation is better without them and death of poor people becomes indirectly a socially accepted form of ?a life after birth? family planning plan! We are corporately creating a future Jamaican family void of poor young men!

It is no wonder then that their crimes are so inhumane, because we have ceased treating them as human beings. They do not care any more because they have concluded that we do not care! They are no longer disorganised thugs in our communities, but disciplined militias with their own agenda of creating their own future because they do not see any future in the current socio-political and economic order that is organised to keep them dispossessed.

There is a deep hole in the heart of our young people, especially young men, that no government can fix. In my local community where the Hope United Church works with children at risk, the evidence at this micro scale is clearly visible ? that our children and young people are deeply wounded and have been mal-socialised by dysfunctional homes and communities. No amount of patchwork is going turn them around. This wound is septic and it requires urgent surgery from all partners who can help to rebuild their resiliency and give them a fresh start, second chance and new beginning to be the best they can in life.

Consensus

At the heart of the reconstruction renaissance needed in this nation is consensus among the political leadership concerning what are the fundamental changes needed in the current neo-liberal economic policies. The current order is not sustainable. It is empowering the wealthy few and impoverishes the many.

One of our former leaders, Michael Manley, once said ?the politics of tinkering? with the status is irrelevant to our social and economic mal-formations. Too much of the economy is not owned by ordinary Jamaicans. Bold steps must be taken to empower and expand small businesses especially in rural communities. Your parties must not become enslaved to big business whether they are local or foreign because they will exploit our democracy in their interest of expanding their profits.

A word on corruption! This disease is pandemic. It will not go away on its own. It is parasitic and respects no social class. The price of overcoming corruption is eternal vigilance. Jamaicans believe that the rich and powerful get away with murder in this nation. Until our justice system is reformed and ordinary people begin to see some of our ?untouchables? doing time in prison then ...

At the end of the day, Jamaicans want to give their trust to the leader who can make the hard decisions and see them through regardless of their unpopularity with their party as long as they are in the nation?s interest. I pray that God will give you an outpouring of His spirit as he prepares this nation to choose who is better suited at this time to lead this nation.

I am, etc.,