Changing the game

In my youth, it was unthinkable that apartheid in South Africa would ever come to an end, or that Nelson Mandela - in prison since the day before Jamaica gained political independence - would ever be released. If anyone had suggested that not only would he be released, but that he would go on to become the president of South Africa, he would have been called a madman! He was released in 1990, and the rest is history.

And the Berlin Wall separating East and West Germany, built in 1961, seemed so solid and so permanent. Who would have thought that not only would the wall come down (in 1989), but that East and West Germany would be reunited again! It seemed so impossible!

As for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR), the communist superpower formed in 1922 that defined an era in global international relations: who would have thought during the Cuban missile crisis or the Vietnam War that, one day, the Soviet empire would fall and break up? That process began in 1990.

During these seismic political shifts, corruption in Jamaica under both the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) remained rock solid, and seemed set to last for another 1,000 years.

Sometimes it seems that there are impossibly powerful forces determined to resist change, whether they are racist Afrikaners, doctrinaire Marxist-Leninists or corrupt politicians and private-sector leaders in the game for as much of the scarce benefits and spoils as they can grab.

But it seems that one factor that helps to change the game is the presence of one or more statesmanlike political leaders to steer the process. Such leaders are rare, for any totalitarian or corrupt system creates mechanisms to ensure that those in the inner circle are faithful to it. For such a person to change the game, it means that he or she has to be unfaithful to the system.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was such a person. He was the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985. He ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party, and led the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

de Klerk's contribution

I'm sure everyone remembers Frederik Willem (F.W.) de Klerk, president of South Africa from 1989-1994. Of solid Afrikaner stock, he came from a family environment in which the conservatism of traditional white South African politics was deeply ingrained. In 1948, the year when the National Party (NP) swept to power in whites-only elections on an apartheid platform, his father, Johannes 'Jan' de Klerk, was secretary of the NP in the Transvaal province and later rose to the positions of cabinet minister and president of the Senate. His aunt was married to NP prime minister, J.G. Strijdom. F.W. de Klerk became leader of the NP in 1989, and engineered the end of South Africa's racial segregation policies, and supported the transformation of South Africa into a multiracial democracy where all citizens, including the country's black majority, have equal voting and other rights. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

These were extraordinary men, coming from deep within the bowels of the systems which they eventually overthrew. There were many who called them traitors - and worse.

Here in Jamaica, we have an evil political system where political thugs control garrison communities, and where jobs, contracts, waivers and other political and economic favours are distributed on a partisan basis. This has produced a world-record murder rate, a world-beating rate of police killings, as well as low literacy rates, high unemployment and low and negative rates of economic growth. How are we going to break free of this evil system?

Dismal record

Third parties have a dismal record in Jamaica, and so we need a Jamaican Gorbachev or de Klerk to emerge from within the PNP or the JLP to change the game, but this seems so unlikely. Such a person would have to be a traitor to the garrison system, a dropout from the culture of corruption and graft. Such a person would have to blow away the cloud of secrecy that obscures the funding of political parties and let in the light of day. Such a person would have to introduce a system where the assets of persons who offer themselves as public servants are constantly under public scrutiny so that any ill-gotten gains can be detected.

At the public session of the JLP conference last Sunday, Orrett Bruce Golding suggested that he was the person who would change the game. Is he to be believed?

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon.