New breeze bringing political change to Ja

This is an excerpted version of a speech delivered by Oliver Clarke, chairman of The Gleaner Company Ltd, to the Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS) Pensioners? Association Luncheon in 2011.

 

You represent a very special group for me, and I thank you for inviting me to have lunch and spend some time with this exclusive group of people.

JNBS is a unique organisation that has been around for a long time and during that time has given much to Jamaican people of all walks of life.

Part of its uniqueness is that it is a national organisation that started in the country and its roots are not only in Westmoreland, but Montego Bay, St Ann?s Bay, Brown?s Town, Mandeville, Port Maria, Highgate, St Thomas and Kingston. We came together because so many smaller financial institutions saw the need to serve the country better and get together.

JNBS is based on a spirit of people and organisations working together. So, here we are at the end of 2011. What will 2012 bring?

The breeze tells me that it is possible to have a hopeful and optimistic view of the year 2012.

Here are 12 reasons for optimism. After all, it will soon be 2012:

1. A new political mood ... better candidates, less violence, less rhetoric, greater focus on important issues, better-informed electorate, and realisation that the politics of the last 40 years, in which the real issues of the society have largely been overlooked, cannot continue.

2. Stronger civil society to force and monitor required change and sanction the corrupt.

3. A police force dealing with integrity and striving for excellence ... an example for all public sector to follow.

4. A focus on dealing with our national debt that now compares relatively with that of Greece.

5. Real discussion about public-sector efficiency and a wage bill.

6. A public demand for greater political cooperation to put national objectives above party opportunism.

7. A focus on how to achieve economic growth and job creation.

8. Realisation that our education system is not delivering employable people.

9. A need for more intelligent economic management ... pay increased taxes, collect taxes from more people, justify public expenditure against payback produced by such expenditure, be very sympathetic to those in real need and, above all, not spending more than one can afford.

10. More people that speak their own mind and will not allow our leaders to bring Jamaica to a failed society.

11. A need to fix the judicial system so that it can deliver timely and respected judgments.

12. A need for the country to be inspired by its elected leaders and not systematically depressed by petty political bickering that inevitably advances party above country.

I believe there is a new political breeze about ... I do not think it is just a Christmas breeze.

In particular, I commend Andrew Holness on using his political platform to speak about the need to address the country?s big problems of debt, the public-sector wage bill, a new taxation system, and I commend him for forcing through accountability among his Cabinet colleagues and for facing the electorate so early in his term.

In particular, I commend Portia Simpson Miller on using her political platform to express compassion for the needs of those economically challenged, her Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme that should address new employment opportunities, and her willingness to include in party leadership competent persons who have run for leadership against her in the past.

Both of these fine leaders and their supportive team members ... one heading Government, one leading the Opposition ... will soon have to demonstrate their willingness and capability to work together to solve the country?s major issues: debt, revenue, expenditure, corruption, incompetence in the delivery of public services, and inability to deliver a satisfactory quality of life (whether in education or employment) for many Jamaicans ? be they the young, the workers, the pensioners, those in the diaspora.

Neither of these leaders and their supportive team members can deliver the strong expectations of Jamaica by themselves. Neither party has all the personnel resources needed to transform the country.

Civil society, led by the private sector, is now demanding a new politics ? a new politics in which the first priority is the delivery of a better Jamaica, not a better Jamaica Labour Party or People?s National Party.

The new breeze we are all now feeling is about to blow a new government into power.

But when I consulted the breeze this very morning, it told me ? quietly but firmly ? that it was determined to blow the new Government out of power just as quickly ... unless that Government started speedily to deal with the 12 issues of 2012 ... and ... found a way to co-opt the support of the Opposition and civil society.

 

Published June 6, 2004

 

Losing the vision of rural development

 

One of Jamaica?s leading companies, Jamaica Producers, celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The managing director and chairman of The Gleaner Company, Mr Oliver Clarke, was the special guest speaker at the Jamaica Producers Group?s 75th anniversary luncheon which took place at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in Kingston last Thursday. His chosen theme ? the development of rural Jamaica.

Here is the full text of his speech.

 

Do you all know of George Busch? My guess is that all of you are fooled by the pronunciation of his name. Let me educate you. 138 years ago in 1866 Captain George Busch (this one commander-in-chief only of a sailing schooner) loaded 500 stems of banana on to his schooner at Oracabessa and Port Antonio and sailed in 14 days to Boston, where he made a good profit selling those Jamaican bananas. Thus the banana export business started.

 

This good profit excited another captain ... Captain Lorenzo Dow Baker, who arrived in Port Morant on June 2, 1870 in his schooner Telegraph, bought some bananas and sailed off to New Jersey in 13 days and made another good profit.

 

Captain Baker then got very active with a two-way trade of bringing flour, pork, salted codfish, shoes and textiles down to Jamaica and this wonderful profitable fruit back. Soon the flour and pork and codfish were stacked below deck and wonderful, charming, wealthy tourists were placed above deck.

 

One could say that the Jamaica cruise ship business was born right there.

 

But all these welcome visitors did not want to spend their entire visit watching the next load of bananas being loaded (in spite of Harry Belafonte's banana song!) so someone had to come up with an idea to keep them occupied till the next sailing ship arrived. And so the Titchfield Hotel in all its original splendour was built. And soon Jamaica had a stack of internationally recognised luxury hotels ... the Myrtle Bank, the Constant Spring Hotel, The Moneague Hotel and the Titchfield Hotel, and more.

 

The development of the banana industry makes for fascinating study. The sugar industry was not doing well in the mid-19th century. Farmers were attracted to change what they were producing ... to move to a crop which could be profitable. Bananas became a crop of choice.

 

The banana industry was developed at the start by American entrepreneurs with American capital. Big names were involved. The Boston Fruit Company, the Atlas Steamship Company, Standard Steamship Company, L.D. Baker and Company, United Brands, United Fruit Company, Elders and Fyffe's, the Cuyamel Fruit Company.

 

Of course, these companies needed local agents to acquire or grow fruit and help the banana industry. Charles Edward Johnston was one of these ... Charles DeMercado got involved ... the Jamaica Fruit and Shipping Company operated a profit-sharing arrangement with a pioneer banana man, Mr DiGiorgio, Sir Arthur Farquharson was there, N.W. Manley, QC, Ansell Hart, and even some folk from Westmoreland like JWN Hudson and Hugh Clarke worked on the Island Committee established in 1935. Large banana growers got going ... like Sir John Pringle and Cecil V. Lindo or F. H. deLisser.

 

A missed opportunity ... a partnership that's not working, JPG was born out of a co-operative movement set up by a wide range of Jamaican producers to ensure that a greater portion of the profits made from growing bananas stayed in Jamaica and flowed to the producer of the product and to Jamaica. This co-operative fought to increase the price paid to local farmers for their produce. This co-operative took on the biggest companies of their time, kept going through efforts to drive them out of the market by price competition, expanded from being a buyers co-operative to vertically integrate into shipping and then into marketing and distribution overseas.

 

Right from the outset the government of the time stood behind the co-operative. For example, government created a special act of parliament to facilitate the co-operative and also guaranteed debentures to the value of pounds ' PLEASE PLACE POUND SIGN HERE ' 200,000 and assisted the conversion of the banana co-operative into the JBPA in 1935.

 

On the base of this co-operation, combined with outstanding entrepreneurial skills - kept burning across many generations - grew one of Jamaica's finest companies, that celebrates its 75th anniversary today. This company today almost single-handedly keeps Jamaica?s banana industry alive. It produces 75% of all of Jamaica's banana exports.

 

But was has happened to Evan Jones ' Banana Man ... the proud, small, rural landowning farmer' He has not enjoyed similar prosperity. This is not due to the growth of the JPG group.

 

It is due to a national abandonment of rural Jamaica. The people of rural Jamaica are voiceless - their problems are not articulated with force and effectiveness in the Kingston corridors of government.

 

We hear every day of the crises facing the inner city. We hear very little of the crawling poverty and frustration of rural Jamaica. Poverty and frustration exist from Westmoreland in the west to Portland in the east.

 

The poverty trap that faces every small farmer in Jamaica today is real.

 

Produce more and lose more is the financial opportunity facing so many small and large rural farmers.

 

There is no stated public vision in Jamaica for rural development. Very few of the agricultural associations are strong and viable. They used to be strong advocates for improvement of rural life. One hardly hears a murmur today from the associations that represent agriculture, sugar, ground provisions, coffee, indeed bananas and all the other sectors that have rural farmer membership.

 

Undoubtedly, there is a chicken and egg situation. The farmers are poor and cannot adequately fund their associations. The associations are underfunded and cannot do their representational work adequately. Many associations have become no more than a collection of regional political chapters. One of the major functions of a government is to build up regional life and so not only improve those persons? quality of life but also halt the increasing urbanisation of Jamaica.

 

Government is failing to do this. It?s partnership with rural Jamaica is failing. This is a missed opportunity. It is also bad government. The banana co-operative that grew so strongly to become the Jamaica Producers Group had at its beginning that wonderful blend of private sector leadership backed by government interest in rural Jamaica witnessed by supportive legislation and financial guarantees. This was a partnership that worked. An opportunity taken. One has only to look at the magnificent pictures of a packed Ward Theatre on July 18, 1935 to see the mobilisation that took place when everyone worked to save the banana industry.

 

Regrettably, today the government and private business seem unable to move together effectively to create more jobs and greater economic growth. It is sad that in 2004 there is not one senior member of the private sector in the Cabinet. The excellent idea of independent senators has been discontinued.

 

This was a great device to allow Parliament to tap the talent of senior persons unable to run for representational politics.

 

I do not believe that it is coincidence that there are no senior business people involved in government and that there is no economic growth. Jamaica of tomorrow will not provide food for our people through bureaucracy, administrative incompetence, and ideological repetition. Jamaica of tomorrow will provide hope if people in rural Jamaica can get work, can pay their property taxes from the agricultural crops they produce other than ganja.

 

A mission for the Jamaica Producers Group -

 

JPG has done well. It has lasted. That is no small achievement. It has adapted to changing circumstances ... from co-operative to stock company, from being a buyers co-operative to being a steamship company, a grower, a purchaser of fruit from other countries, a ripener in Jamaica, a ripener in the UK, a packager in the UK, a major supplier to UK supermarkets, a dealer in all manner of fresh produce in the UK, the maker of the best fresh orange juice and other fresh products in the UK, a partner with a major multinational, as well as and most important, the maker of the best breadfruit chips in Jamaica. JPG has shown the world that Jamaican companies can be internationally competitive. All of us must admire this performance. A performance maintained across three-quarters of a century.

 

JPG is a company that is a model for any Jamaican business to follow. Its shoulders bear a massive burden today of keeping many workers in rural Jamaica as wage earners and their communities alive. If I was impertinent enough to suggest a mission for JPG, I would suggest that it works to demand a national policy to develop rural Jamaica. Your corporate navel string is buried in the rural parishes - from Portland, St Mary, to St James and the many parishes that today have faltering agricultural bases and whose farmers are suffering badly. All of these need a champion to help them recreate a livelihood, stop flowing into the housing problems of Kingston, and be proud to be small farmers ? not necessarily in bananas but through growing crops on their own plots.

 

I urge you to build back the small rural farmer who Evan Jones wrote so memorably about -

 

Up in de hills, where the streams are cool

An mullet and janga swim in de pool

I have ten acres of mountainside

An a dainty-foot donkey dat I ride

 

"Four Gros Michel, an four Lacatan

Some coconut trees and some hills of yam

An a pasture on dat very same lan

Five she-goats and a black ram

Dat, by God and dis big right han

Is de property of a banana man

An when u see dese ol clothes brown wid stain

And soaked right through wid de Portland rain

Don?t cast your eye nor turn your nose

Don?t judge a man by his patchy clothes

I?m a strong man. A proud man, an I?m free

Free as dese mountains, free as dis sea

I know myself, and I know my ways

And will sing wid pride to de end of my days

Praise God and m?big right han

I will live and die a banana man"

 

Try and see what you can do to be the big right hand ... small-scale banana growing is not viable but there must be something else.