Ronald Thwaites | Who is really tone deaf?

Nigel is right. Indeed, for the banks to raise fees at this time is worse than tone deafness. It is a contempt against every citizen, given the ongoing skimming of people’s money by institutions which charge you for every transaction with your own money; pay you negative interest rates on your savings; earn much higher spreads than their international counterparts; bleed your so-called dormant accounts into their bottom lines; and manipulate the supply of foreign exchange in ways that frustrate the production of goods and services, occasion devaluation, and increase the cost of living.

We should all listen to the undoubted leader of the Caribbean Community, Mia Mottley, on this subject. She doesn’t ‘skin up’ with evil, nor plead with them to behave. Even mild Delroy get ‘renk’ about the predatory fees and poor service, although he voted against the banking services reform bill. Remorse?

As the banks applaud themselves for their much-advertised charity to us, we, same ones whose money short, garland them with the confetti of national honours. When they screw us tighter last week, our finance minister, their man until recently, tells them they are “tone deaf”.

This mildest of reproof is disproportionate to the psychological and financial ‘bitch lick’ they delivered the public. The big-big minister ends up begging banks to be considerate of the public interest!

And what is the response? Up to Friday night, one bank has thrown us a small bone of concession, while the other players maintain their smug and obstinate silence. The bosses and head offices in Canada, and elsewhere, can be sure the pre-pandemic profit levels will soon be exceeded. Never mind the consequence of increasing mirasmi among the natives.

Jamaica’s wealth is the biggest export of the nation. No need for the ugliness of chattel slavery any more. The unbridled neo-colonial system delivers similar results. Reread Walter Rodney’s writings. No wonder the house slaves and bushas had to expel and eventually kill him.

“You cyan lose the next election you know, man. We will take care of you. Jus’ doan mek dat man Fitz Jackson get tru wid him socialist foolishness.”

KNOW WHERE POWER LIES

Sadly, Nigel, you are among those who are tone deaf. The banks know exactly where their power lies. The current ideology of market fundamentalism (check the evangelists Dennis Chung and Stokes) and crony capitalism will dictate that nothing will be done to help people who are being spat upon when we are already down and out. Hilaire Belloc said it well: ”When all is said and done, they have the Gatling guns and we have none.”

Listen to this: “I cannot preside over a Jamaica where existing inequalities and unequal endowments follow us into our future. We are unleashing business not to create a wealth gap, but to lift everyone’s prospects ... I have a higher duty to protect the vulnerable.”

Thank you, my prime minister. But like so many things you tell us you stand for, the opposite is happening. Please tell us how public policy having to do with food prices, financing costs and utility rates is helping us very vulnerable pensioners, minimum-wage earners, underemployed youth, plenty public-sector workers to escape from the worsening predicament which you yourself acknowledge?

Because, Sir, our purchasing power is declining at an even faster rate than ‘poor’ NCB’s net profit. And all of us are paying more tax as a proportion of our incomes than the high-ups in the corner offices. Check Jeffrey Sachs’ irrefutable economic analysis at the recent Davos Conference, if you don’t believe me.

Please, you don’t be tone deaf, too. Remember what happened to Marie Antoinette!

“When money is our moral authority, humans become commodities and the value of each human life is measured by an ability to pay.”

In recent weeks, the public, with less and less ability to pay, has been sucking up huge increases in fuel (do not think we are fooled by the likkle 25 cents reduction once in a while) and now chicken raise again. A grisly trifecta – bank charges, gas and light bill and food cost – all at the same time, all essential to decent living. Bread and dumpling will soon follow.

The head of the bankers association situates the higher fees in the context of what he describes as the “strong pace of economic recovery”. What Kool-Aid is he drinking, please? But no. If your cartel can charge your customers anything you feel like and government cyan stop yu, and if the emoluments in your sector are multiples of what a prime minister is paid, why then, your recovery is very strong indeed. Yeah mon. “Let them eat cake,” she said.

FUTURE IS PREDICTABLE

Look here, our system of political economy, our deification of the market, cannot bring less inequality and more justice to Jamaica. The future is predictable. Can’t you hear the sotto voce of the manipulators?

‘Fitz Jackson must go siddung. Him talking too much morals. Leggo the import licences for the chicken parts. Poor people will love us for the cheap food, and we will get nuff money to run election, even if the banks get stiff. And shut yu mouth about disclosing the pricing formula for the gas, or what a gwan at HEART. Look what happens when you let opposition members think dem have talk when dem chair parliamentary committees!’

A postscript of sorts. Perhaps four years ago, in answer to my questions, after plenty pressing and long waiting, the minister of agriculture was constrained to provide Parliament with a list of the companies to which chicken back import licences had been granted. The corporate names were designed to camouflage identities, so further research was done, revealing a galaxy of ‘connected’ persons.

This continues, and will inevitably happen again with the chicken imports, all under the excuse of providing cheap food. An understandable objective, but easy to subvert. Look how the JAS appears to have gone soft on the leg-quarter issue already. Small chicken farmers, you get sell out!

In 2014-15 when an effort was made to switch the School Feeding Programme from mostly foreign food to local produce, the idea was ridiculed as being romantic and unrealistic. When I insisted, it wasn’t only the self-imposed inadequacy of home-grown supplies which prevented the change, but the powerful hold which the importing sector had on this multibillion trade through those who granted licences. Has anything changed?

Our politics and special interests continue to prevent the systemic changes needed to realise Andrew Holness’ laudable dream for us all. Nigel Clarke is going to find out the same thing if he attempts much-needed, thorough reform of the public sector. Unless there is cross-party consensus on transformation, the same fate that befell the “bitter medicine” guy will be his lot in time.

Failure to apprehend the rapidly deteriorating circumstances of the majority and the institutional resistance to change by the advantage-takers of the past and their melanised successors, is the worst kind of tone deafness. It is wilful tone deafness.

Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!

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