Hylton Dennis | Why are we selling out Jamaica?

All laws devolve legitimacy from national constitutions, yet 57 years later, two-thirds of Jamaica's laws are relics of British colonial legislation dating back to the plantation slavery period.

There is a claim still as yet to be credibly refuted, that one of Jamaica's "constitutional framers" successfully proposed to the others that "to give the Jamaican people justiciable rights would derogate from the sovereignty of parliament".

Accordingly, outside of the general election due every five years to decide the national governance leadership, the people of Jamaica have to be content with knowing about Government actions and decisions through the media, having little if any say in them.

To ease the national tension which this could give rise to, those who are so amenable have been organized into aggressive rival political party fraternities in which relations are supposed to be like the filial bond in a family but are anything but that. The core members might know a little more than the society, making them naturally more inclined to defend their party colleagues in Government.

It doesn't end there, for it appears now more than ever that the highest credential a minister in the Cabinet can attain is finding favour with foreign governments by divesting significant Jamaican national assets to their countries for their nationals to control and repatriate the substantial profits earned from those assets to strengthen the economies of their countries.

Consequently, while Jamaica's greatest economic weakness has been a negative balance of trade, the prospect of a reversal fades farther in the distance after each divestment. Foreign governments are calling the shots in an increasing number of Jamaica's key economic sectors.

The national investment promotions agency, JAMPRO, has been lauded for its leading role in finding preferential foreign buyers for national assets, calling their stakes foreign direct investment. It targets low wage employment in exchange for egregiously generous national revenue depressing tax concessions, low-intensity interventions in glaring industrial relations violations, cavalier granting of work permits.

Ironically, the latest furor over the Government's planned legislative expropriation of shares held in Jamaica's sole petroleum refinery Petrojam, by a Venezuelan Government company, exemplifies national apprehension about the sale of national assets to foreigners because of the credible suspicion that a favored foreign buyer is waiting to buy out the refinery.

Some commentators have been playing up the political factor of possible pressure by the US for the Jamaican Government to cut ties with Venezuela. However, if this is true, it might well be the lesser of all the factors.

SELLING OFF ASSETS

Successive governments sold control of the lucrative mineral mining sector, first to American and Canadian corporations, then to an alleged criminal Russian billionaire as well as a Chinese Government conglomerate. Telecommunications was sold to Irish and American investors, and air and seaports to multi-country consortiums.

The national airline was sold to Trinidad, and the electric power supply monopoly first sold to a bankrupt American Corporation Mirant Energy, which sold it to a Japanese and Korean partnership.

French and Chinese multinationals control our major road networks, to who motorists pay exorbitant tolls to drive across, while Spanish investors control the biggest tourism assets.

The resold of the financial sector, which had been nationalized for three decades of Jamaica's independence life span, suspiciously gave control to Trinidad's Guardian Life, its former parent company Jamaica Mutual Life. Then the oldest and largest Caribbean insurance led conglomerate, and at least about two-thirds of the life insurance sector was sold to Sagicor Corporation of Barbados.

The biggest Jamaican bank, NCB, was sold to a Jamaican with Canadian citizenship who repatriates the profits he earns from it overseas. This is despite the fact that in the 80s, Jamaicans recapitalized it, buying a substantial portion of its shares, expecting that if the Government was selling its controlling interest they would get first preference. Thus, it is quite in order to call it a sweetheart deal. The state functionary who negotiated its sale became its CEO soon after and is now the highest paid executive of a public listed company in Jamaica.

Meanwhile, the Jamaican people hear more about separation of powers than about sovereignty, which is the authority of a state to govern itself, from the political representatives, suggesting a greater focus on the internal structure of government rather than on international recognition of Jamaica as a sovereign state.

Only time will tell if the Jamaican people have been fooled good or fooled for good by their political leaders, because this sell-out has been going on for a very long time now.

- Hylton W. Dennis is a publisher and past vice president of the Press Association of Jamaica. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com