The following are excerpts of a speech by Professor Trevor Munroe. It was presented on Saturday night at the installation and awards ceremony of the Optimist Club of Trafalgar at Paradise Cafe.
IT IS not easy to be an Optimist anywhere in the world today not in Trinidad with the weekly kidnappings, not in Canada with the high taxation; certainly not in Sri Lanka, nor Iraq.
Yet there are Optimists everywhere. In your movement, internationally, there are:
4,000 clubs, 114,000 individual members, 65,000 projects; serving 6 million young people today.
What this tells you is that no matter the trials and tribulations, no matter how dark the hour might be there are human beings everywhere, who see and accentuate the positive; who believe in the indomitable capacity of the human spirit to ultimately triumph over every adversity.
Certainly this spirit of optimism is still alive in Jamaica today though you would never believe it, if you only listened to some of the talk shows that feed a constant diet of negativism.
If negativism, despair and hopelessness were the only, or the main thing, about our country and our people today, about you and I, the Optimist Club of Trafalgar would perhaps never have been formed.
It is not that you and I are not aware of the negatives. We cannot help it even if we wanted to. The week before you were formed, for example, in the middle of August 2002, the media were full of reports about political violence and murder in Tawes Pen, St. Catherine. The very day you were formed, August 17, 2002 The Editorial in The Gleaner headlined ominous signals and wrote of 3 deaths in Spanish Town over party flags. The front page headlined 'Double Murder 3rd in less than a week'.
These were and remain regrettable and ultimately avoidable negatives happening all around. Understandably, if not justifiably, many of our brothers and sisters react with pessimism; shake their heads in despair and either do nothing or try to leave Jamaica, land we love.
REACTED DIFFERENTLY
You, on the other hand, reacted differently. You promised yourself, in the words of the Optimist Creed 'To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind' and 'To think only the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best'.
In this, as you know, you are not alone there are over 70 Optimist Clubs in Jamaica.
In this optimism, in this working only for the best, you are carrying forward one of the heroic traditions of our people. To bring forth good out of bad:
To bring forth freedom out of slavery over a quarter century before the great American people were able to do likewise;
To bring forth democratic rights, like the right to vote, out of colonial rule before any black colony was able to do so;
To bring forth social reforms, like equal rights for women and trade union rights for workers in the 1970s, almost 30 years before similar advances were made in the United Kingdom.
To bring freedom of speech and a free media in the 1990s, acknowledged as being by far, greater than most countries in the world, out of the despair of high crime and economic stagnation.
And so we Jamaicans have an enviable tradition a tradition of which you are a part of bringing forth good out of bad, positives out of negatives. We must redouble our efforts to keep this tradition alive.
In this regard, our country's politics during the course of the last week presented a negative spectacle the spectacle of open internal conflict threatening the vitality of one of the important organs of Jamaican democracy the Jamaica Labour Party.
It is not for me or for you, on an occasion such as this, to judge the rights and wrongs of the main actors in this drama. What we can say is that, however regrettable and negative this episode from the point of view of the Jamaica Labour Party, there is a major positive from the point of view of the party and our people.
It allows us to put suggestions and make recommendations on issues that are and have been for some time, at the heart of public concern about Jamaican politics.
Do people get contracts from politicians and political parties when they become government not because they are qualified but because they gave big money to the politician or to the party?
Are politicians and parties able to buy votes because of how poor so many people have become, because of how much lower levels of public morality place individual gain over integrity and because there are no limits put on how much politicians and parties can spend on elections?
Does it make any sense for Jamaicans of honesty to vote either in internal party elections or national elections if those who get in are going to be looking out for themselves and looking out for those who, behind closed doors, backed them with big money?
How can we stem behind the scenes corruption in high places without greater transparency, disclosure and access to information on the part of the public from our politicians, political parties and government?
Don't we now need some rules and regulations governing our political parties, how they are financed and how they fund exorbitantly expensive election campaigns?
I certainly think the time has come and long gone when we as a people, should be looking at and developing a framework of regulating our political parties and financing for election campaigns.
Almost every people in every democracy around the world have to be developing or amending such a framework to ensure that democracy is not hijacked by:
Denying the right of the rich to give money to whomever they wish;
Denying the right of the people to know who is giving to whom;
Making elections a contest between who can raise and spend more money than who;
Making government corruptly beholden to private backers with big money rather than accountable to the people.
To contribute to this national debate and hopefully to the speedy development of an effective system for regulating our political parties, I make the following recommendations:
The government should establish as a matter of urgency, The National Commission called for by the Senate in approving a resolution (which I moved) on May 3, 2002.
The existing minimum requirements of the Representation of the people Act that each general election candidate's expenditure should be limited to $3 million per candidate and that returns should be made indicating expenses and donors within 60 days of the general election and that penalties imposed for offences be enforced.
A Political Parties Act (in the manner of the existing Trade Union Act) should be proposed, debated and passed, following the hearings of the National Commission, requiring political parties to be registered, their constitutions to meet specified criteria and their annual accounts to be audited and publicly available in a manner similar to that required of trade unions.
The identities of donors to political parties contributing over a set minimum amount of cash or kind should be disclosed.
A maximum limit should be set on how much a political party, including its candidates, can spend in internal party and in general elections.
Maximum limits should be set on what an individual or institution can donate to internal party or general elections.
Each registered party contesting an election should be entitled to a set minimum of free time on radio and television and a set minimum of free space in the print media.
Each registered political party contesting an election should be entitled to public support, in cash or kind, to allow publication of its manifesto, maintenance of party offices in constituencies and election campaigning. This would need to be allocated on the bases of an agreed formula.
The Electoral Affairs Commis-sion (EAC) and the Office of the Political Ombudsman should be responsible for monitoring the observation of the system of party funding and campaign financing.
I put forward these ideas not as a solution but as a contribution to a long overdue national debate, and ultimately towards the development of a framework that can help close one of the serious loopholes, a loophole facilitating corruption and endangering our system of democratic governance.
In closing, I invite your thoughtful consideration of these ideas and recommendations.
Again, I congratulate your club on the milestone of this first Installation and Awards Ceremony and pledge my every encouragement to your continued optimism and the indomitable spirit of your club and that of all the Jamaican people.
