Ronald Thwaites | Why are we ‘samfi-ing’ ourselves?

It’s a bad thing when someone samfies you. It’s much worse when you do it to yourself. Agreed?

That grounds my concern about these impressive finds of firearms and ammunition. This is great news. It removes weapons of death and terror from the society. But after the applause and backslapping, who is asking these questions?

Where is the weaponry coming from? Why aren’t there charges laid? Why do so many announcements come before importers are brought to book? Moreso, what about convictions for gunrunning? Any? And what happens to the hardware seized?

What assurances are there that some do not leak into criminal hands? How come, despite the impressive finds, firepower is still so plentiful? Wouldn’t the people’s confidence be improved if there were swift public destruction of all the contraband? Who could be against that?

It isn’t enough just to find the guns and shots. If the consequential questions are not confronted, it is likely that more will come in and be used murderously. We will be fooling ourselves to think that the problem is being solved.

PETROLEUM PROBLEM

Then take the immanent petroleum problem. The minister assures us that the supply won’t be short. Thanks for that. But isn’t the crucial issue the likelihood of having the oil but being unable to afford gas at the pump, not to mention the light bill and everything else? Other governments are giving their citizens a prognosis on prices going forward. Why not here? How does anyone plan their business without such an estimate, however tentative? And what will the Government do about the heavy taxes on the fuel? Nothing?

If the Budget is really premised on oil price south of US$75 per barrel, how will the nation cope with crude averaging north of US$110 last Friday? One, the minister reassures us that the spike will be temporary, same time as the other minister is so sure that tourism will soon bubble as never before. Really? When last did we ever see fuel prices go down sustainably?

That takes us to the issue of the exchange rate. What are the factors affecting the ‘dip and fall back’ downwards of the dollar? Surely, the Bank of Jamaica and the other rulers of the nation in the financial sector are estimating supply and demand for the rest of the year. Absence of projections makes nervous speculators of us all.

So merchants hedge and price their goods and services for replacement at $160-$165 to US$1. After all, their survival depends on not being victims of the self-samfi. The ‘guineagogs’ prosper, but the rest of us have little choices.

And as a sidebar. We wring our hands and shed tears about desperately high road fatalities but refuse to admit that there are increasing numbers of unqualified and incompetent vehicle operators who are laughing at our collective self-deception that a new law is going to cure that. Self-samfi, again.

Perhaps the most distressful undercounting last week was the assertion by Education Minister Fayval Williams that about 10,000 students have had no schooling for the past two years. Where is the survey which could validate that figure? Respectfully, minister, please review your estimate.

Underestimating a serious problem is a version of samfi. Count the plenty pickney on the street using school hours. Check every honest school leader and they will tell you that the real numbers are multiples of 10,000, everybody drop back. Two billion, not 200 million extra dollars are needed in this year’s Budget to begin to remediate the rot.

Why fool ourselves? Go further. Check CAPRI’s report, the 2021 World Bank study, and the Patterson Report to validate the extent of the actual, as well as the effectual dropout problem pre-COVID-19,and, now worse, post-COVID-19.

SCHOOL NO MEK NO SENSE

Dangerous numbers of our youth are still saying, “School no mek no sense”. Let Pearnel Snr tell you of the school he knows where the children who could read in 2020, can’t manage a sentence now.

The reality is that we avoid asking hard questions and demanding honest answers, because doing so may reflect poorly on those who exercise power and responsibility. Ministers must be made to look good in their often unremarkable moments on stage.

Instead of the usual puffery, which most of us don’t check for anyway, why not Budget and Sectoral debates this year, brief in presentation, long on truth, short on self-samfi and mutual cussing, and strong on a unified approach to some of the most dreaded problems which a disappointed and increasingly desperate citizenry face daily?

Please indulge a postscript. Does Jamaica adhere to foreign policy based on principle or expediency? The nation of Ukraine, generous to many of our students, humans like ourselves, is being destroyed by a modern-day Stalin. Most of us are appalled at the gratuitous cruelty.

So are we going to permit one of Putin’s cumbolos to continue to operate here without sanctions? If Moscow can continue to prosper in its killing and skirting nuclear holocaust by selling oil and reaping bauxite while we do nothing, won’t the result be that we are complicit in the carnage and world peril. And then when some big power – military, political or financial – decides to ‘tek step’ with us, what moral precept will we invoke to seek help?

Shouldn’t we stand for principle like we did in South Africa and Zimbabwe? Boycott Russian trade and suspend their investments until they cease fire and negotiate.

“If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech. If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; then light shall rise for you in the darkness..The Lord will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land.” (Isaiah 58: 9 et seq)

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