The Editor, Sir:

Your editorial of January 3 (PNP needs a fresh start) is very timely and decisive and it is hard for anyone, raised on the moral value of not sparing the rod and spoiling the child, to disagree with the points raised.

Sometimes it takes a good back-siding to get a child to see the folly of his or her ways and the People's National Party today is like an errant child who grabs up its marbles and bawls and goes when he/she loses the game. But life is not really a game, is it?

For some of us who are students of history, especially black history, it is embarrassing to see how the hopes and aspirations of our forbears who fought to escape slavery have been betrayed.

Master visionary

When Marcus Garvey launched his National Club in 1909, he became the master visionary mapping a course for the destiny of our people. His was a sterling contribution that included the advocacy of universal education, land reform, and the use of public funds to promote the development of people's intellectual skills and their economic potentials, though mostly misunderstood, Garvey left a rich legacy of ideas that have been largely ignored in Jamaica.

It was not until 1962 that this new nation was born and while our nation has made positive gains and has made a great contribution to world culture, the mass of black poor people have not benefited from our potential wealth.

Let us assume that petroleum is found, would that change the modus vivendi, the existing state of affairs in our country?

For example, while in government, it was fashionable for the PNP leaders to spout rhetoric about it being 'Black man time', but did they educate our nation about the good moral attributes of blackness. Is there a national curriculum based on the Hon. Marcus Garvey's ideas? In this sense and based on the prevailing evidence, we could rightly conclude that the highly educated strata have completely failed our country.

Many members of the black middle class have not lived up to expectation. Instead, they have cynically used slogans such as 'it's black man time', as a means to get ahead of everyone else. The hard-working people, who get up before the sunrise, work hard to earn a living, expecting, at the end of the day that their labour will lift them higher up on the economic ladder. Instead, all that has taken place is belt-tightening and more belt-tightening.

Therein lay the moral dilemma facing the PNP. It has become bankrupt of ideas. Your editorial is therefore very timely and decisive. If the PNP hopes to move forward, it must do like the JLP did when they threw Mr. Seaga overboard without a life raft. Now, the PNP ought to, I believe, invest goodwill in young progressive middle class women like Ms. Maureen Webber. She would make a good general secretary to rebuild the PNP. Regurgitating 'the old same old same old', will not bring renewal to the PNP. This would provide the fresh start you are perhaps talking about.

I am, etc.,

NORRIS MCDONALD

miaminorris@yahoo.com