Nightmare before Christmas

Din Duggan, Contributor

"'TWAS the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."

Well, that's not entirely accurate. It's actually three nights before Christmas and all kinds of creatures are shuffling and being shuffled about in all sorts of houses, including Jamaica House.

For some strange reason, with all that is happening in Jamaica, my mind keeps drifting to thoughts of hamsters. No, not ham. Hamsters.

Have you ever seen a caged hamster running on a wheel? Typically at night the hamster will emerge energised, prepared for work. The hamster, by nature, is a nocturnal creature. In the Syrian Desert, its home territory, the rodent surfaces from its burrow, under the cover of darkness, to hunt for food and displace energy stored up during the day. The caged hamster, in contrast, has nowhere to go. Its food is provided by its captor. Its nocturnal tendencies and high metabolism are satiated only by the exercise wheel in its cage. The hamster runs and runs, but ends up nowhere.

Lately, a few people - very few - have been asking what I want from them for Christmas. My typical response is: "nothing". I've been tremendously blessed with most, if not all, of the material possessions that I currently need. Although an 'Apple iPad' tablet computer would be nice (hint, hint), it's not a necessity and I'm sure I can live without it. On second thought, though, there is one tiny, little thing that I really want this Christmas - a miracle.

No real economic growth

The Oxford Dictionary defines a miracle as "a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency." The miracle that I so fervently desire this Christmas, and going forward into and beyond the coming year, is substantial and sustained economic growth in Jamaica.

Since the 1960s, when gross domestic product (a measurement of a country's economic performance) increased at an annual rate of two to eight per cent, Jamaica has been unable to achieve significant and sustained growth. The reasons - crime, corruption and political tribalism being most prominent - are varied and widely publicised. But the bottomline is that the economic pie has not been growing at a meaningful pace. In fact, in the past two years, it has actually shrunk. Recently, the prime minister has stated that "he is absolutely certain" that the recession will end during the first part of next year. He obviously shares the same Christmas wish as me.

Wishes aside, more and more of us are hustling, working longer to make ends meet, and exerting energy to secure an economic dream that will never materialise so long as the current status quo obtains. We are, in essence, just like the hamster - toiling assiduously yet going nowhere. This is our nightmare!

Slow revelations

This revelation is nothing new, but, for far too long, we've remained in our cages, sprinting on the wheel, staring at the same Magnum Tonic Wine calendar on the same wall, embarking on the same journey to nowhere. We've survived off tiny scraps of the pie while many of our leaders and their cronies 'nyam the big food'. But, as the Wikileaks episode abroad, and recent developments here at home have demonstrated, greater transparency, through increased access to information driven by enhancements in technology, is sparking an information revolution that will inevitably shift this paradigm.

No longer will we need to take the words of wayward leaders as gospel. Our eyes, like that of newborns, are slowly opening to their trickery and deceit. We are conscientiously refusing the orange and green pills that have clouded our vision. We're beginning to step outside our cage of tribalism. This is their nightmare!

After the nightmares of so many Christmases, it is this miracle of human advancement - a drive and will to achieve better for ourselves and our society - that will invariably liberate us. For, ultimately, it is they that are the hamsters and we the masters, and it is the light of information that will force them into their burrows of deception and finally uncage the economic and social potential of a tremendous nation.

This is our dream.

HAPPY Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.

Din Duggan is an attorney and entrepreneur who now works as a consultant with a global legal search firm. Contact him at facebook.com/dinduggan, twitter.com/YoungDuggan, or dinduggan@gmail.com.