One bright day

By Din Duggan

There has probably never been a better time than this bright, sunny, summer day to give serious consideration to the issue of political finance reform. That is if, of course, you don't count those days, two years ago, when scores of Jamaicans were killed as their prime minister defended the rights of a single political supporter (now a convicted drug and gun smuggler).

If the 2010 Tivoli tragedy showed the slightness of the line between politics and nefariousness, last week's St James Parish Council bombshell completely obliterated that line. Montego Bay's deputy mayor and a parish councillor were arrested for allegedly playing significant roles in the MoBay-based US$300-million international lottery scam.

If the allegations are true, what we are witnessing is perhaps the clearest indication yet that politicians and criminals are no longer simply in bed together, but they have - over the years - conceived and bred a mixed brood of corruption and criminality that has now reached maturity. Politics and crime are no longer mere collaborators in protecting their mutual interests; the two entities have become one and the same.

CELEBRATION TIME

I apologise to the nation for broaching such an ugly topic at such a magnificent juncture in our history. Celebrations beckon. Fundamental fairness demands that we be granted a recess from our dogged productivity (92nd out of 125 countries, according to a recent study by INSEAD) to commemorate our many accomplishments.

We've worked hard these 50 years. We've surely earned a much-needed champagne and fireworks (or at least Guinness and 'clappers') break. After all, it requires tremendous effort to transform a nation, which, in the 1960s, enjoyed a booming economy (to the tune of eight per cent GDP growth per year) into one that has barely inched forward in three decades.

In just a half-century, we've earned hard-fought distinctions in a multiplicity of categories: murders (among the world's bloodiest nations), criminal innovation (an ingenious system of bartering Jamaican ganja for Haitian guns); inefficient bureaucracy (consistently ranking in the bottom half of the World Bank's survey for ease of doing business); human-rights violations (among highest rates of police homicides globally) and institutionalised injustice (courts, with severe case backlogs, are morbidly dysfunctional).

Even The Economist has taken note of our dark distinctions, recently observing that, despite Jamaica's successes on the athletics track, our economic performance has been distinctly abysmal (our GDP growth over the past dozen years has trailed even that of the much-maligned Haiti).

But who cares about The Economist and its futile attempt to rain on our dual parade? Our focus right now is more on Olympic gold than socio-economic goals. It's of little concern at the moment that the average Jamaican is no better off today than he was 40 years ago. The average Jamaican, today, is more concerned with the athletic performances of a handful of extraordinary Jamaicans than with developing a stable socio-economic foundation for all Jamaicans.

Perhaps, at some later date, when we aren't so preoccupied with arbitrary milestones, fun, and games, we might address our many shortcomings. Perhaps we might ask ourselves why the world will entrust us with very little more than microphones and batons; why we are content with being jesters when we have the capacity to be kings.

ACT WHILE WE CAN

Maybe on August 13, the day after the Games of the XXX Olympiad, and our 18,271st day of Independence, we might feel inclined to mend the myriad complications that delay our date with greatness.

Or maybe we won't.

Maybe time will pass. Babies will exit their mothers' wombs to eventually send others to early graves. Fatherless sons will kill their neighbours over nonsense. Peace officers will, in turn, kill them.

Zinc fences and burned-out cars will separate 'us' from the savagery. Behind the ghetto walls, young girls will forcibly lose their innocence to the crude streets.

Young men will remain at the mercy of 'big men', who will exploit this wellspring of dysfunction to build illegal empires, consolidate power, and wrest control of city councils, political parties, and the Parliament from the few good men and women who remain.

All the while we will cheer and shout: "Jamaica nice!", "We likkle but we tallawah" and "9.58 seconds", until we awaken, one dark, dreary, hopeless night, and wonder how exactly we got here and why it was that we failed to act on that bright, sunny, summer day when we still had the chance.

Din Duggan is an attorney working as a consultant with a global legal search firm. Email him at columns@gleanerjm.com or dinduggan@gmail.com, or view his past columns at facebook.com/dinduggan and twitter.com/YoungDuggan.