Don Robotham, Contributor
ONE OF the unnoticed by-products of the fight against crime has been the development of greater unity in Jamaican society. So far, there has been only a little of the usual partisan bickering that has overwhelmed such efforts in the past.
More interestingly, attempts by the supporters of gunmen to stage carefully choreographed demonstrations for the TV cameras have failed. Apart from the usual noises offstage, bloody-mindedness and gullibility are diminishing in the Jamaican media. All this is the fruit of our newly won unity and single-mindedness.
This unity of purpose in civil society is what is saving Jamaica today. It is our secret weapon. It is priceless and precious. Guard it and don't allow anyone to tamper with it. The entire society is experiencing relief as a result of the new anti-crime measures that have been made possible because of this increased social unity. However, the shootout on Christmas morning in Allman Town showed that it is early days yet. We shall have many more such shootouts and worse ones too. We must prepare ourselves psychologically for them and not allow ourselves to be blown off course.
For one thing, we are still dealing with the fryers no real breakthrough has occurred in subduing any big fish. Nor could this have been expected at such an early stage. The big fish are shrewdly laying low for the moment (in Jamaica but not in London), waiting for the current storm to blow over, as storms have in the past. This struggle will require plenty time and great sacrifices from our security forces and the general public. Whatever the cost, we must find new opportunities to sustain our unity and, indeed, apply this unity more intelligently and fiercely over a longer period of time to every sphere of Jamaican life.
THE ECONOMY
Actually, it is in our handling of the economy that we face the greatest challenge. How to take this still-fragile social unity around fighting crime and apply it effectively to our economic and social problems is the task before us. Here approaches like 'war' and 'assault' do not apply. Neither 'the original gold teeth, front teeth Don Gorgon' nor 'Saddam' can help us much here. In the economic and social realm gunmanship does not work. What works here are incentives, rates of return, savings, interest rates, investment, money supply, budget surpluses, competitive exchange rates, inflation, trade-offs, optimising, cost management, negotiation, efficiency gains, education and training, productivity, technology, competitiveness, marketing, planning, motivation and keeping our eyes glued to our common interests as Jamaicans. Even more than the crime problem, this one will demand Job-like patience and understanding from us all.
For example, full coverage of the food stamp needs of the poor would probably require an additional J$4 billion. Even if we collected all the customs duties which the indefatigable Mike Surridge of the Revenue Protection Division reported was evaded by crooked elements in the private sector (Sunday Gleaner 22 December), it would only amount to about half of the additional money needed. And this is without taking into account any additional money needed for school-feeding or inner- city programmes.
If we are realistic and strengthen our unity, we can overcome our economic problems but this will require an entirely different approach. It will demand tough choices, unprecedented mutual understanding and time plenty of it. This is where our social unity is likely to fray and even to fall apart. Traditional trade union, Chamber of Commerce or 'class struggle' approaches, will not work here. We cannot simply 'log on' to economic growth typical consumerist nonsense borrowed from Elephant Man by the People's National Party (PNP).
There is no free lunch to be had here. If we really want to make a lasting impact on crime, which is a precondition for achieving sustained prosperity for the whole society, we have to be willing to pay the cash price. Can we use our freshly-minted social unity around the anti-crime measures to achieve unity of purpose in the economic and social arena? Can we increase the returns to social unity?
This would mean understanding that public sector resources, while they must bear the main social burden, will not be enough. Civil society will have to go beyond the purely legalistic approach to human rights and begin to address social and economic rights with similar zeal as is happening with the new head of Amnesty International in London. They must come forward with significant initiatives for poverty alleviation funded from their own pockets, supplemented by grants from overseas. Organising this effort is vital if the private sector is to recover its moral legitimacy and if the population is to truly respect human rights advocates. More private sector investment is absolutely essential for growth. It is not only public consumption that has to be cut.
HEDONISM
Restoring a stringent macroeconomic regime will be essential. An entirely new attitude to transparency and accountability in public expenditure as well as in how we live our private lives is required. We cannot continue to tolerate a situation where the returns to education, including the much-prized 'A' levels, are declining. But we also must be more forthrightly critical of the self-indulgent consumerism and carnival-dancehall hedonism that has overwhelmed all classes of Jamaican society since the 1980s.
This is not only a matter of gun, slackness, 'fire bun' or 'tiny-winey' lyrics much of a muchness or of the entertainment scene. Hedonism has a very broad social, indeed historical, basis. Jamaican Protestants values the secret behind the successful rise of the black middle class out of the small farmer class in the 20th century has clearly been in crisis for some time. For example, in the extravagant raiment displayed in nearly all our churches every week, the grand palaces in which some of us luxuriate, the preference for consumption above investment, while shedding crocodile tears over inner- city poverty. Values and attitudes indeed!
Ian Boyne has been practically the only voice campaigning against this deep-seated and corrupt cultural trend for years. Contrary to what many Jamaicans imagine, 'making statements' with name-brand consumption-mania is not capitalism at all but a parody of it. It is in fact a hindrance to capitalist development because it sucks away savings and investment. This is not a call to put on sackcloth and ashes. Simple common sense moderation in consumption, a higher savings rate and a greater emphasis on investment will more than suffice.
We must continue the intense pressure on our politicians to give back their salary increase, in order to increase the returns to social unity. Since the salary of a civil servant is pegged to that of the politician, this should automatically trigger across-the-board reverse cuts in the entire public sector wage bill not just the central government part. Layoffs may be necessary. Obviously the reduction of interest rates is not an alternative to cutting the budget, as some in the Jamaica Labour Party, (JLP) seem to imagine. On the contrary, cutting the deficit is the essential precondition for reducing interest rates, in order to manage the pass-through effects of the ensuing devaluation. Such policies, which are inevitable in the circumstances, will have the most severe social consequences. We must lay out the facts from now so that the Jamaican people can face up to and understand them in their stark reality. Contrary to what we all wish for, jobs cannot simply be 'created'. No political one-upmanship needed here, please.
Forget about PNP and JLP or about 'Patriots' and 'G2K.' Better to listen to B2K the American pop music group who may well be their namesake and idol! Civil society wisely ignored this divisive trivia when it was attacking the crime problem. Now is not the time for one social group to make blanket indictments of the patriotism of another, or for demagogic remarks about 'Two Jamaicas.' The point is not simply to recycle the 1950s ideas of the late Professor M. G. Smith and Philip Curtin: I can think of at least five, possibly six Jamaicas. The point is that, notwithstanding our incorrigible fractiousness, there is also one Jamaica. We have to work hard to reveal and nourish this oneness in a spirit of give and take.
From 1655 when Jamaica was seized for the second and final time from the Spanish Crown on the instigation of Martin Noell and the group of wealthy London merchants around Cromwell, we have always been a divided society characterised by absentee wealth. There are deep fissures of class, race and region which permeate Jamaican society. Jamaica, thankfully, is not and never will be the Cayman Islands or Barbados, no offence meant. Jamaica will never work as a white or light-skinned dominated appendage of Anglo-America.
But what is critical is not the existence of these divisions but our approach to them. Do we, out of frustration with our lack of economic growth and the scale of our social problems, aggravate these divisions fanning the flames of guilt and resentment that actually need precious little fanning? Or do we face up to our divisions and constructively search for ways to overcome them?
The newly-found unity on anti-crime measures has been a unity across all the historically deep social, racial, political and regional (rural-urban) fractures of Jamaican society. Just in time, civil society realised that harping on our tribalistic class, racial and political divisions was handing a great victory to the criminals and leading to our common security ruin. It will also lead to our common economic ruin, if we do not shape up. The greatest achievement of the anti-crime measures has been the revelation that, despite our divisions, we can achieve unity of purpose in Jamaican society and actually get this unity of will to prevail in a vital area of public policy. But we have to self-consciously take explicit steps to strengthen it. It does not come naturally, especially in economic and social policy divisiveness does. Yet what a powerful force this unity is proving to be once it is unleashed.
One Jamaica!
