Ronald Thwaites | Him did responsible for himself

That’s how people in the yard describe the family relationship of the 15 year old youth in Westmoreland now charged with murder of his little boy cousin.

His ‘responsibility’ availed him a loaded gun, now the favoured symbol of assertion and power (aka ‘protection’) by all classes in Jamaica. We talk of peace but love to seemingly glorify the weapons of war. Don’t? That young guy has learned well the lessons taught him by his circumstances and the society.

The story of social destruction continues: his mother nowhere nearby, his father working elsewhere, the ‘yute’ get kicked out of school for bad behaviour – and now this. Predictable? Inevitable!

This in the same week as the members of Parliament waste our time and money trying to destroy the repute of the auditor general (along with a glancing thump at the PAC chairman) as a last lick for her frequent exposure of the corrupt and inefficient underbellys of the agencies over which they, same ones, are supposed to be in charge. In short, they defend corruption.

Could the prime minister and his Cabinet not have known of that smear campaign, since it spanned two sessions of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC)? Should they have stopped the dangerous farce? Happily, the defensive stupidity on display boomeranged. Mrs Pamela Monroe Ellis’ repute for fairness and toughness in protecting taxpayers’ interests remains way more credible than the self-obsessed, wanna-be bullies on the backbench. There is some balm left in Gilead.

CULTURAL FAILURE

We are purposely missing the main plot. The Westmoreland killing, and countless other murders, shootings and rapes every day, emblematic of cultural failure and portent of further destruction, are taking place while, instead of dealing with these life-and-death issues, the exalted Senate ridicules itself and distracts the rest of us with the ‘email-gate’ scandal.

And not only here at yard. Lisa is right. Jamaica’s repute as a strong, independent voice in foreign affairs has been squandered by the obvious sucking-up to the ‘trumpists’. But notice that not even that serious and closely argued charge can reach the parliamentary floor for discourse. Calcified irrelevance? Who suffers if and when we get ignored to the back of the line for vaccines?

The institutions of governance cannot measure up to the crisis of the times. In witless desperation, covering your rear end to buy your way into continuing but near-fruitless power, becomes the main preoccupation. Tell the people, Mr and Mrs Ministers, you who tell us not to watch the exchange rate, don’t you go to shop since election and find the food prices rising and the money devaluing. This, even as you pontificate (up to last Friday at the Bank of Jamaica) that inflation is modest, hunger soon done while the minimum wage remains stuck, even as the financial sector and stock market dividends explode?

And the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, Economic Programme Oversight Committee and the Growth Council tell us that things soon alright!

Surely the ‘big-big’ analysts at the Planning Institute of Jamaica foresaw the hurricane of higher commodity prices coming. But no warning, no remedy, no alternative to the at least 25 per cent increase in the Sunday-day dinner prices between March and May! And it don’t done yet.

So the little boy dead. And the 15-year-old deh pon murder charge, social intervention discredited; so much gun deh pon street that even pickney can get. For the underclass, state of emergency still a keep, even if it isn’t declared yet.

MANAGE TOGETHER

Church lock up. Christians looking in the sky for God to come while Jesus’ crucified blood a run down Dalling Street and Denham Town. Civil society constipated. Plenty media people sell out. Drink responsibly while you whine on a gyal. Use condom. Conditions apply. Gamble $20 and win a million. Tek scamming money and build nuff $30-million apartments, while garbage can’t collect. Jamaica, no problem!

Andrew and Mark can’t sit down yet, admit that divided we can’t manage, and together, yes together, come to us with some of the huge personal, societal and budgetary changes so desperately needed. Vale Royal becomes the graveyard of the united imagination and common purpose of which we are so capable.

Some first steps are humbly and respectfully proposed once again. Repetition is supposed to aid pedagogy.

Fayval, don’t let yourself be bullied. Since we don’t have the courage to repeat the largely lost school year, insist on the mandatory summer school. Get the early-childhood cohort back in school now. Most parents are anxious to be released from 24/7 childcare. Check out where the $6.3-billion school-feeding money is going. Will you dare ask the auditor general to help? My guess is that the attendance, behaviour, and learning of close to half a million schoolers are in need.

Nigel and Horace, beg you please, sirs. Idleness and misplaced resources are robbing us of GDP growth under your watch. Done the squabble over the China Harbour ‘set hand’ that Peter Espeut has laid bare. Put the 15-year-old youths and their kith to work and learn. Use the soldiers to supervise them – not with guns and threats to kill, but to discipline, train, make HOPE universal, and for somebody to be ‘responsible’ for them.

We must have the money to do that. Even if it means that some of us will have to ‘live simply so that others can simply live’. Christians, check the example of Acts 2:42-47 and square that with our lives here and now.

There are about 120,000, 15 years and older, of whom it can be said ‘him/her is responsible for himself’. And the number is growing. Time for effective action instead of mere words, hand-wringing and repression.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.