Ronald Thwaites | Give us our daily bread

While the leader of the free world is irreparably damaging the trade patterns which affect everyone, with no apparent positive gains even for his own country, the prices of food and basic services in Jamaica are quietly and cruelly increasing by about 20 per cent over the last six months.

I am basing that estimate on the cost of a small breakfast or lunch in Central Kingston, the money needed to put out a child to school every day and for the few who try, coping with utility bills.

People are sullen about this situation. Food inflation is much higher than overall inflation, especially when there is little or no choice of what to buy with the pittance available. Rice, flour and sugar dominate. That can’t be healthy.

IGNORING HUNGER

Most of the children coming to our school are chronically hungry or malnourished. Many of the elderly who attend the church where I serve have trouble finding Sunday dinner. They are among the half of the population who are food insecure. The anaesthesia of a carnival mentality has induced us to ignore those reputable survey results.

Isn’t it amazing that the cost of living and nutritional deficiency are not major election issues? Which prosperity can be built on hungry belly foundation? Now that the Jamaican dollar is at 160:1 plus the Trump tariff effect, prices will continue to rise.

Which party has a plan for food security for the whole population. Is it any wonder that women are thinking twice before having children? Same time as one MP asserts that ‘ban yu belly’ time is over. How much more like Marie Antoinette can you be!

FIDDLING WHILE…

Our leaders are fiddling while social conditions deteriorate for the underclass of the nation. In America the billionaires in power are doubling their wealth while social security, Medicaid, child care and elements of education are made to languish and millions of children worldwide are condemned to marasmus and starvation due to the savaging of foreign aid.

Here there is announcement of a National School Feeding Policy (with AI generated picture graphics!) but when I ask when needy children can access the pictured meals, there is waffle and no timeline. To save face we water down exam standards, normalise under-achievement, demand more pay and check for the next bashment.

DO WE BELIEVE ALL ARE EQUAL?

The profound unease of our people is grounded in the obvious disbelief that we are created equal by God and uniformly protected by our fundamental law. A few enjoy the tourist standard of life. The majority must be repressed or entertained. Most painful of all is the normalising of the conviction that most black pickney are dunce because of something they have done or not done. Complacency or worse conspiracy with failure perpetuates the worst lie of the slave culture.

What is the use of state power or school leadership if you can’t or won’t use it for broad transformation? What good is the abundant wealth running down the government’s debt instruments every week but unavailable for productive investment?

The ministers encourage diversifying our exports just as the brilliant Robert Lightbourne did at the dawn of Independence. But what have we got to sell in sustainable quantities? The glaring example of our deluded impotence was last week’s story that authentic black castor bean products, like our ganja, coffee, cocoa and coconuts, are being cheated out of massive revenue by imposters prostituting our brand. What is to happen?

GRAB ‘N GO

Instead of an economy and budget premised on the common good with special care for the most vulnerable, there is a grab, led by many in charge, to enrich themselves as if there will be no day of reckoning.

The story of the Chosen People, pilgrims journeying from slavery to their promised land, told in the book of Exodus, is applicable to Jamaica.

God provided bread and meat in the desert and through Moses instructed each to collect as much as he needed. “No one who had collected more had too much, no one who had collected less had too little. (Exodus 16:17-21) Those who tried to hoard beyond what they needed found that their wealth turned foul, became maggot-infested and melted away.

Jamaica is not poor. Our abundance of talent, opportunity and material resources is insufficient because we are divided and greedy. It is a moral problem before it is an economic one.

A NEW WAY

Pope Francis and Leo, following the gospel of Jesus, propose a philosophy of life, a political economy which acknowledges that individual success is only worthwhile and protected from turning foul and maggot-infested if it is used for the flourishing of all. Does the use of our tax dollars reflect that principle? Is that the civic ethic which we are teaching our children?

This “New Way” gives sacredness to personal ambition, encourages individual effort, discourages dependency and false entitlement, instead acknowledging human relationship and fostering generosity of spirit.

It supersedes ideological attachment. “They so gathered that everyone had enough to eat.”(v21) God is not the God of excess, of plenty, but of sufficiency, of enough. Only love and mercy must always be in abundance.

Interestingly, as our group tries measures to transform literacy, numeracy and humane values, it is from the conscious private sector, not the constipated state sector or the defensive school bureaucracy that support is being derived.

Why doesn’t Jamaica use these values, rooted in our Christian tradition, as a guide to how we live with each other, how we educate children; how we organise social relations and determine how to spend our money and time? And yes, what political choices we make and how we frame constitutional reform.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com