Editorial | Employing more than prayer

Samuel McCook, its chair, and the other organisers of the National Leadership Prayer Breakfast are fully aware of what this newspaper reminded them of last week: the deep cynicism many people have of the annual event, at which the great and the good gather in gilded ballrooms to sup and beseech higher authority for fixes to Jamaica’s problems.

Reverend McCook, it is clear, does not agree with the naysayers, or critics like The Gleaner, which, last week, pointed out that more than 40 years after the first Prayer Breakfast was held, seeking intercession against the murderous political rifts of the day, Jamaica recorded just shy of 1,500 in 2022 – 69 per cent more than in 1980.

The Church, Mr McCook explained at a press conference ahead of this Thursday’s event, was working “in partnership with the private sector to do something positive, not merely to criticise and complain”. By which he - perhaps - meant getting money from enterprises to fund social programmes in marginalised communities. That is good.

Reverend McCook also highlighted the efforts made by the breakfast’s organisers to enhance the relevance of the event. They have invited “outstanding Jamaican youngsters to speak on behalf of our young people and [to] speak to us as a nation on an equal footing as adults”.

He added: “We have been doing that (attempting to make a positive impact) for 43 years, in good times and bad times, with limited resources, under the glare of the society and examinations as to whether this is a worthwhile venture. More educated and informed people than myself have been able to make strong arguments why this isn’t a waste of time; but like the tortoise who has nothing in mind but the finish line, we just keep going.”

GOING WHERE?

And that is precisely the question. Going where? And how?

In 1980, when the first breakfast was held in a quest for social-political healing, the murderous thugs were primarily the clients, indirectly, of the Gangs of Gordon House – enforcers, who, for the favour of petty patronage, corralled votes in garrison communities that were off-limits to political opponents.

The gangs may have evolved beyond political control to become violence-dependent economic enterprises as the ideological tensions between their ‘sponsors’ receded. But as one of Reverend McCook’s fellow clergymen, Bishop Rowan Edwards, pointed out last week, there is a legacy relationship between the old warriors and today’s gangs and the communities in which they are based.

Despite much talk over decades, garrisons remain largely intact while the political inheritors of their founders fail at fashioning a common enterprise for the defeat of gangs.

“Their predecessors started it. Now they must come together and have it fixed,” Bishop Edwards said.

The residue of the garrison politics, however, is not manifesting only Jamaica’s high levels of criminal violence. It is evident, too, in the country’s weak approach to governance that saddles the country with corruption that saps an estimated five per cent from the gross domestic product. It shows, also, in the low level of trust Jamaicans have for the institutions of the State.

Indeed, upwards of 70 per cent believe the state bureaucracy to be corrupt. Over 40 per cent distrust Parliament. Half have the same view of the police. A fifth believe that the judiciary is compromised.

This, to say the least, indicates a manifest failure of leadership and of governance. That failure transcends a single administration or political party. Put another way, the Gangs of Gordon House have been unable to, or are incapable of, completing the metamorphosis into modern institutions of unimpeachable integrity and transparency to gain people’s deep trust.

EXTRAORDINARY LEADERSHIP

The transformation for which Jamaicans hanker demands extraordinary leadership. Those in charge, however, are largely constrained by the self-preservatory nature of their tribes. They are unlikely to transcend these circumstances unless constantly pressed, and held to strict account, by external forces.

Reverend McCook, quite obviously, has a far deeper appreciation of scripture than this newspaper. There is no question, therefore, about his handle on this text from Proverbs 14:23: “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.”

Implied in our observation last week about the National Leadership Prayer Breakfast is its tendency to poverty of sorts. We asked: “Is it even feasible to expect that peace can come about in the absence of unity between the relevant stakeholders? Is unity achievable between our current politicians for the good of Jamaica?”

We now pose a follow-up question: Have the principals of the National Leadership Prayer Breakfast, which avows a higher moral plane, worked sufficiently hard, absent of hypocrisy, to achieve their declared aims?

They seem, despite periodic but almost perfunctory denunciations of the failures in governance and its nexus with Jamaica’s societal crisis, willing to coexist seamlessly with the holders of temporal power.

Maybe this year’s National Leadership Prayer Breakfast will mark a turning point if its organisers feel compelled to go through with it. They may well decide to use the occasion to give the great and the good an ultimatum about real hard work that is measurable and time-bound to demonstrate tangle improvement in governance. Failure would lead to an end to all engagement with those who wield authority – whether in government or enablers in the private sector. Church leaders, after all, can act on higher authority.