Dawn Ritch, Contributor
TWO REVEREND gentlemen, Jamaican exiles overseas, it seems, have written to the editor chastising me for saying overseas Jamaicans should keep themselves quiet.
Rev. Dr. Ralston Nembhard can barely whisper the word 'remittances' in his letter, as though I should be in thrall because émigrés support their families in Jamaica. Maybe their families have to do as they say, but I certainly don't, and there's nothing 'mean-spirited' or 'facetious' about that. I am also singularly unimpressed by the fact that overseas Jamaicans have mastered email and insist upon abusing it.
Some letters ought not to be written and, if so, ought not to be sent. Donkey, bicycle and airplanes are infinitely better ways of carrying a message, because the sender has a chance to give things a second thought. Now they just press a button and spray the world with their opinions. They have all the impact of a water gun. One is amused to see it done at all, but too much of it is annoying.
NO SUCH RIGHT
Rev. Stoddart boldly and wrongly asserts in his letter that overseas Jamaicans "not only have the right to comment on our nation's affairs, but also to vote in our nation's affairs." They have no such right, not to vote anyway, and that rather invalidates their opinions.
None of them can vote in our elections unless they are registered here, and the enumerators found them living at their Jamaican place of abode. This seems perfectly fair to me, because any other circumstance would be to reduce the resident Jamaican population to a form of disenfranchisement where only the votes of propertied gentlemen are valid.
There are more of them out there in the diaspora than there are of us in this vale of tears. If they voted, Jamaica would become even more of a nonsense than it already is.
Overseas Jamaicans believe that reading Jamaican newspapers and listening to our radio call-in shows streamed over the Internet give them an informed view of the island.
Chief among them is Sir Bill Morris, Jamaican-born former general secretary of Britain's Transport and General Workers Union. He recently told the Jamaica U.K. Diaspora conference in Birmingham that Jamaica's politicians are damaging the country's international image through the unending labelling of each other as corrupt.
He said: "We have to think and speak up for our country. As (interested) diaspora, it means all of us become custodians of our country's image and it is not enough just to be in charge but we have to take personal responsibilities."
NONE IN CHARGE
Well, none of them is in charge, regardless of what they think, including him. Simply because the value of remittance exceeds our annual earnings from tourism or bauxite, does not place them in charge of us, nor make us their prostitute no matter how many opinions, or how much money they have.
Most of them don't even own a home in Jamaica much less bother to come here any more. And when they do, a public scolding and a failing grade are never far behind.
We have no tradition of listening to Jamaicans over-seas.
Our tradition is to go overseas and make others listen to us. And then repeat what we tell them. The exercise in which this lot is engaged is like tilting at windmills. The overseas Jamaican will always remain a slight figure of fun to us.
Now their ludicrous opinions under guise of remittance responsibility is sure to confirm it.
Sir Bill, soon to take the ermine in the House of Lords, needs to accept that politicians accuse each other of corruption because it's true.
There is abundant evidence in Jamaica to that effect. Since he seems to believe it untrue, I'm delighted it's impossible for him to take "personal responsibilities" in the matter from way over there.
Sir Bill suggested Jamaica's problems were due more to a failure by individuals to follow due process than a result of corruption.
This man clearly has forgotten about 'tief'. This is a country in which the only 'due process' such a person can expect, or even hope for, is in a court of law. Any other 'due process' is a legal fiction people use, usually in committees, to conceal the ugly truth. So we know a lot about those too.
Sir Bill spoke about "the process of patronage" as being at the root of our evils. Yet he finds in this no corruption. He doesn't surprise me in the least bit.
In the year 2000, he was a member of the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords. This is the hereditary House of peers who are unelected and have a legal oversight on what the government does. Most recently, it stopped legislation that would have infringed upon and curtailed the rights of the British people.
Nevertheless, instead of being hereditary, the commission recommended that the House of Lords should be elected or selected. British Prime Minister Lloyd George in the 19th century, was the first to win an election by promising to launch an assault upon the Lords and hereditary privilege. Once in office he created more peers to award his cronies than all other British prime ministers before him combined.
CASH-FOR-HONOURS SCANDAL
Tony Blair, the current Labour Prime Minister, also made reform of the lords one of his campaign promises. By the end of his second term, not only had he thrown out most of the hereditary lords, but he had packed it full of his own cronies. He has made more peers even than Lloyd George.
Now Blair is embroiled in a bitter cash-for-honours scandal. It seems the British Prime Minister has been ennobling at a rapid rate the donors of secret multimillions to his own political party.
Eventually the commission responsible for reviewing the list has had to go public on the names they were refusing. Some may be innocently embarrassed, but others were a dodgy lot.
This is why Sir Bill's name appears "on a denuded list of appointees compiled by the Labour Party." His reforms have effectively ensured that only a union man with no cash could ever be selected to sit in the House of Lords. Anything else would be, and is, a scandal.
REFUSING ENNOBLEMENT
According to the Voice News, Sir Bill "would have liked the title of Lord Morris of Manchester to symbolise the parish of his birth. Other suitable titles like Hanover and Portland have also been used." It seems to me that he forgets that these were the names of historical figures, and that is why they were, as he says "used." He arrives rather late in the game.
What's more, British citizens have been refusing ennoblement because it's become such a public scandal. In light of Sir Bill's own intellectual contribution to this sad state of affairs, it shows rather poor judgment on his part to have accepted a peerage at this time.
In this, he's like every other Jamaican, whether here or overseas. There is no appointment we would refuse, no honour, no matter how tarnished, we would not accept.
