51 years of Independence and what?

Delano Seiveright, Guest Columnist

"The conditions existing today have not sprung up overnight, but they have been left to grow worse till the situation is now acute ... . What Jamaica needs now is practical and sympathetic men interested in the country and not charlatans and self-seekers making long speeches about nothing ... ."   ( Alexander Bustamante, 1938)

Those words, spoken by national hero and one of Jamaica's Independence founding fathers, Sir Alexander Bustamante, ring with as much effect now as it did 75 years ago when he spoke them. Sir Alexander would probably be in a state of shock to see the ramshackle and brutal state in which the very same people whose lives he battled hard to improve exist today.

We have developed a culture of mediocrity, and just maybe an innate ability to get anything done, while making long speeches about nothing. In the 1960s, under the leadership of Prime Ministers Sir Alexander Bustamante, Donald Sangster, Hugh Shearer and then Finance and Planning Minister Edward Seaga, downtown Kingston's waterfront, in collaboration with the private sector, was in the midst of a very well-planned development.

The plan covered the development of a financial centre, a series of multi-storey office buildings and apartments, a convention hotel, and recreational areas to make downtown Kingston into a modern metropolis with a magnificent skyline, putting it in league with some other small and mid-size cities the world over.

Some progress was made. However, the reckless socialist experiments of the 1970s Michael Manley-led administration and the resulting social and economic decay put a sturdy spoke in that wheel. Telecommunications giant Digicel's move under the Golding administration to quickly establish its multi-storey corporate headquarters on the waterfront, heralded a needed renaissance. Nevertheless, downtown Kingston's waterfront is just a very small fraction of what it could have been.

Fast-forward to 1992, when the eminent Professor Rex Nettleford chaired a special government-appointed Committee of Advisers on Government Structure. A comprehensive report was submitted proposing that the size of the Cabinet be cut to 11 core functions and that a new structure of government seek to maximise the benefits of interaction between the State, private sector and civil society.

More than 20 years on, in the midst of an economic and fiscal crisis and years of anaemic economic growth, the Cabinet numbers, a whopping 20, the largest in more than 30 years. Incidentally, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller was a member of the Cabinet in 1992.

Now inching along to the mid-1990s, former prime minister and then opposition leader Edward Seaga proposed a major development project named the Fort Augusta Freeport Development Plan, taking in the strategic development of 250 acres. Herein lies a very well-conceptualised and pragmatic development plan that has the ability to bring significant sums of foreign exchange into our cash-strapped nation while employing thousands.

As stated by Mr Seaga in a column months ago, "It requires an expansion of the Kingston Container Terminal and Freeport to accommodate mega ships currently being developed, for which the Panama Canal is now being widened. The development would provide more berths, creating additional pier accommodation, including access to the Port Royal archaeological park.

"It would also include assembly manufacturing, Internet technology, hotel accommodation, a free port area for shopping and a cultural park for cultural presentations."

Seventeen years after Mr Seaga's brilliant proposal, and now with the Panama Canal entering the final stages of expansion, government after government has spoken ad nauseam with little in the way of substantive success. Jamaica is again being left behind.

At the turn of the century, then Prime Minister P.J. Patterson established the National Commission on Ganja chaired by the late Professor Barry Chevannes. The final report, which was quite comprehensive, recommended the decriminalisation of ganja in small quantities for private use by adults. Hardly any progress has happened since, as government after government simply dragged its feet on the issue.

The only glimmer of hope occurred under the previous administration which moved to send persons arrested for about eight ounces of the weed to the petty sessions court for adjudication.

Beyond that, in the United States of America just last year, we saw where voters in the states of Colorado and Washington voted for the legalisation of ganja for recreational use in small quantities. In Washington state today, if you are 21 and older, one can possess up to an ounce of ganja for personal use, among other variations for cakes, buns and teas.

Illinois, America's fifth-most populous state, which includes the US's third-most populous city, Chicago, this month became the 20th state to legalise medical ganja use.

Internationally, the same is true in countries stretching from Europe to the Americas. In the last several days, Uruguay's House of Representatives approved a bill to legalise and regulate the production, distribution and sale of marijuana. Recreational ganja users will no longer face time in jail and or suffer the misfortune of having a criminal record.

Opposition Senator Tom Tavares-Finson shocked the nation when he last summer pointed out that at the Resident Magistrate Court in Half-Way-Tree alone, approximately 300 young Jamaican males receive criminal records for small quantities of ganja on a weekly basis. A criminal record, as we all know, serves as a major impediment on upward mobility, and to getting visas.

GET JAMAICA MOVING

For a nation renowned worldwide for ganja, which is primarily attributable to our rich and unique Rastafarian influences, it is a crying shame that we continue to dawdle on an obviously absurd and unjust legal framework.

The cultural issues aside, from an economic standpoint, the country is in a very strong position to attract thousands more tourists to our shores, develop new industries, create jobs, all while collecting millions in new revenues.

In the state of Washington, ganja legally sold from state-licensed stores will be taxed at a rate of 25 per cent, with experts already predicting a windfall of hundreds of millions of US dollars in new revenue for the State yearly.

Twelve years after the National Commission on Ganja report was submitted, Senator Angela Brown Burke several weeks ago in the Senate boldly called for the decriminalisation of cannabis for medicinal reasons. Days after, Mr Raymond Pryce, member of parliament, called for a debate on the decriminalisation of ganja as well as a prescribed legal limit for possession.

Senator Brown Burke, in her presentation, noted, "There are other states and other countries that are way advanced than we are because they have taken that bold step to step forward." The senator, who is also the mayor of Kingston, and inarguably the most powerful vice-president of the ruling PNP, deserves as much support as she can get. The same is true for Mr Pryce, known to be particularly close to Prime Minister Simpson Miller.

Former Government Senator Dennis Meadows and Member of Parliament Mike Henry have been vocal on the matter, with very little action from the previous administration. In any event, Senator Brown Burke's and Mr Pryce's statements may very well represent a strong signal that the administration has an inclination to unlock the massive and positive impact that decriminalisation will have from cultural, social, judicial and economic standpoints.

I hope that their bold positions will be furthered with the alacrity that is required. Let's tax, regulate, control and educate on ganja. We have wasted enough time already. Let's think big and get our country moving again.

Delano Seiveright is a former president of Generation 2000, a JLP affiliate. Send feedback to delanoseiveright@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com. Twitter @delanoseiv.