The Jamaican economy has been in recession since March 2008, according to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN). This means we will be having our Christmas in a recession. Yet, in a recent national broadcast, the minister of finance Audley Shaw told the nation that the economy was not in a crisis at all.

STATIN says that the economy declined by 0.4 per cent in the quarter from September to December 2007. This happened during the first quarter under the JLP's administration and even before the American recession began in December 2007. The economy declined again by 0.03 per cent in the first quarter of 2008, from January to March. It declined yet again by one per cent in the second quarter from March to June. In three successive quarters the economy had declined.

0.3 per cent decline

STATIN is likely to show that the June to September quarter was also negative because the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) reported that the economy declined by 0.3 per cent between January and September this year. The PIOJ projects that the economy could even decline by 0.5 per cent in 2009.

Under the circumstances, I sympathise with a Gleaner editorial (November 30) recommending a 'crisis Cabinet' to review the state of the economy. Dr Omar Davies had already called for a parliamentary debate on the state of the economy in October. He was ignored. The editorial wants the prime minister to be blunt and frank about the crisis facing Jamaica. Tourism, bauxite-alumina and remittances, which bring in the bulk of our foreign exchange, are all down. LIME is one of the latest companies to announce coming job cuts. Port expansion plans are suspended and port traffic is down even in the busy Christmas season. The signs of the crisis are visible daily.

The editorial advised the prime minister to recognise that Jamaica is facing challenges that are "perhaps unprecedented in the nation's modern history". It advised that he should assemble a credible management team, place the country on a "war" footing and reshuffle and reshape the Cabinet into a crisis Cabinet.

In denial

Many have criticised the administration for doing the opposite, being unrealistic, being in denial, being in wonderland, for sugar-coating and not doing enough to stimulate the economy. In fact, in more recent weeks, the Jamaica Manufacturers' Association, private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, Small Business Association, and Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association have all just about said this.

The language we use confirms our growing realisation that these are not normal times by any means. Golding himself described measures he announced in July to contain gun crimes as "extraordinary". Both government and opposition talk about the "war" on crime. The United Nations speaks of a development "emergency". Now, the Gleaner editorial talks about the need for a "crisis Cabinet".

That editorial was titled, 'Wanted: A Crisis Cabinet'. I say instead, 'Needed: Crisis Governance', first to suggest that this is something we actually need. Second, to say that this must apply to our broader system of governance, not just the Cabinet, and third, because the crisis we face is not just economic but ecological, climatic, and social as well. I take special interest in this because of a course I teach at University of the West Indies.

Hostile environment

Caribbean political systems evolved in a much more benign international environment of post-war economic recovery when the crises of energy, climate, violence and drugs were unknown. The pursuit of nation building, specifically development with democracy, seemed relatively uncomplicated. It seemed to the Caribbean middle class that the only thing needed was to extend social mobility to the poorer classes.

However, for the past 40 years or so the institutions and ideas of both development and democracy have been coming under increasing stress from the changes occurring in how we live, work, trade, study, and of course govern ourselves, nationally and globally. The disconnect between the style of living and the capacity to live according to that style has now produced a number of crises in the systems that support our lifeways. We get this in the crises of energy, food, family, production, and so on, creating more stress on society's capacity to reproduce itself by the old ways of market, state and family. Yet, the most critical reforms of governance, democracy and development that we have talked about have not been carried out.

Hostile environment

Governance now occurs in a less benign and indeed, hostile environment. But the structures and priorities of governance have not really changed in response. The old priorities of middle-class life based on freedom and high living standards are still denied to the many and are under threat where they exist. Mortgage and home crisis, high-interest loans, heavily taxed incomes, threats to job and career, growing education costs, ill-affordability of motor vehicles and gas, high-cost apartments and rents, new health and safety risks are all real fears that haunt the middle class itself and gated communities cannot shield them from it all. The crisis of living of the middle class extends to the crisis of credibility of the political class, which comes from that middle class.

Our systems of governance were never designed for small, dependent and vulnerable societies. These systems are based on delay, fragmentation, and centralisation. They are therefore slow to act, cumbersome to manage, and too top heavy to mobilise. A crisis Cabinet would be frustrated by the larger lethargy of the system. Individuals have tried to operate within this system while operating outside its restraining conventions and have failed. Michael Manley's politics of mobilisation, Karl Blythe, the former water and housing minister, and Superintendent Reneto Adams, are among them.

Unconventional approaches to fast track action are foiled and the persons responsible are defamed and defrocked. The multiple and overlapping crises we face today expose the ill-fit between our system and our condition more than anything else. It cannot respond well to crisis in the form in which it currently exists. Worse, the present governors will not even admit that there is a crisis. Probably to do so is to accept a challenge to act through a system that is likely to fail. But not to accept the challenge to act with urgency is to fail even before beginning.

Emergencies

We have to build a system that can mobilise a nation to act with urgency in response to situations that are emergencies, especially those like poverty that we have come to complacently accept as normal, so that we can move forward with a common will to do the most important things like saving lives and providing livelihoods under conditions fit for human beings.

Cannot mobilise charity

Christmas is coming. This is the one time of the year when we try to love and be kind to each other. But we do not even have the structures to be charitable to all who need it. We cannot mobilise charity in any sustained way. We are a democracy that cannot support human rights and we are a Christian country that cannot support Christian love. We might suspend our reality for a few days over the season but we will have to come back to the hard facts in the New Year. There will be lives lost to criminals, jobs lost to the economic crisis, and hopes lost among the homeless and hungry who will wonder if Christmas, democracy and capitalism are not for them too.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona Campus. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com.