Orville Taylor | My Christmas wish list

It is just around the corner. Trust me, I bumped into it and have the bruises to show. No snow, no sleigh, no reindeer, and certainly not the potbellied senior citizen clad in the thick, red suit. Deep sympathies for those costumed role players, baking under the Jamaican sun, with uncomfortable swathes of cotton, glued unto their jaws and cheeks. Yes, it is Christmas, and there is the paradox of goodwill and gift giving on the one hand and the creeping of the criminals out of the cracks and woodworks.

What a cycle! Many get broke, or broken into, and few actually get a break. Don’t get me wrong! Far from being a Scrooge, I love the season. True, it is barely correlated with the historical or geographical birth of Jesus, but there is an ambience of good cheer, which cannot be fully explained.

Like every other Jamaican, I want my ‘Lama’, and inasmuch as a US$1 million would do me well, my Christmas wish list is for a better Jamaica, with some specific things to make it possible. These are:

• Serious and concerted effort to reduce corruption. If the head of the stream is clean, then sewage does not get into the drinking water supply. No tainted money must be allowed to leach into the system. Our proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) is a great statute. However, not only must financial institutions and attorneys not process dirty money on behalf of their clients; but they must not be permitted to collect their fees from the filthy lucre either.

Since legal fees must be sanctified of criminal money then the State must also not allow for fines to be paid from unknown sources either. Separate from the right of the State to confiscate unexplained earnings, if he didn’t legally earn the fine, he must do the time.

ACCESS TO LEGAL AID

• Furthermore, the discriminatory, and in my opinion, unconstitutional denial of some categories of criminally charged individuals of access to legal aid must end. It is bad enough that police officers are blocked from this right. However, when drugs and money-laundering defendants are exempt, this opens the door to illegal money paying for legal services. My feeling is that no attorney has taken on this egregious travesty because it serves a nefarious purpose for those who only give lip service to reducing corruption.

• The best for the best. If we want the most important jobs to be done by the most qualified people, then doubtless, we must pay them accordingly. Ministers of government are underpaid and should be given decent salaries relative to their public officers and market wages. Certain categories of public servants must have deep ‘fit and proper’ scrutiny. Bombshell! If Officer Dibble has to do polygraph tests, then ministers, senators, prosecutors, and judges must ALL do them too. Add to the list psychometric tests as well.

• Kudos to the Government on the recent passage of legislation to tighten the rules for appointing government boards. Commitment must now follow, with the Opposition watching like an insecure ‘matey’, ready to pounce every time the Government drops the balls.

• Trade unions must shift their paradigm and start focusing on medium- to long-term benefits. They should be good ‘parsons who christen dem pickney first’ and show that they have good health, life, and pension benefits for their officers. Hugh Shearer and Michael Manley are dead, but the modern trade movement, like both sides of Parliament, is living off their legacies. Unions must stop chasing five and eight per cent increases and ask what happens to those workers who serve with diligence and fidelity for 20 years and more.

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION VERY IMPORTANT

• For all the prestige we tertiary educators get – and we deserve it – if the system does not lay a proper foundation at the early childhood level, it comes to naught. Sociological, anthropological, psychological, and social work research all point to negative social outcomes such as crime and violence when the process is subverted early. Educators in early childhood institutions must ultimately be postgraduate trained and remunerated better than Crown prosecutors. Believe me, it is harder to replace an MSW clinical social worker than it is to train one of those.

• Similarly, the Family Court must be elevated to a High court, with lots of Rex, Regina, and dictums to instruct judges. The family is too important an institution to be left up to the private whim of a single judge who has no eternal scrutiny and whose judgment is not even as recorded as that of the Industrial Disputes’ Tribunal.

• Finally, fly-by-night pastors have got too much of a free run. All churches must be registered with boards comprising ‘fit and proper’ members. Despite them being ‘charities’, some have too much money concentrated in the hands of a few persons of suspect character. Filing of earnings and other financial data should be deeply monitored.

The list is by no means complete, and this being the year of the World Athletics Championships, Commonwealth Games, as well as us hosting CARIFTA, I want to see a return of male domination in the sprints and at least one senior female outdoor world record. Our only senior female world record is Merlene Ottey’s 1993 indoors 200 metres or 21.87.

Merry Christmas.

- Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.