Links between business and crime
Published:Friday | June 4, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Are there links between business and crime? Obviously, yes! But are they positive, negative, more one than the other? Jamaica Chamber of Commerce says the operation in Tivoli Gardens last week is likely to have a tab of more than $600 million. News reports indicate that as business begins to pick up in downtown Kingston, enforcers and extortionists are notably absent. Joseph Matalon, Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica's boss, contemplates suing former prime minister and representative of the west Kingston constituency Edward Seaga for comments about a speech he made. The business fallout, Matalon suggested, was worth it. Apparently, one view was that his comments related to lost lives and mayhem. Mr Seaga is reported as being unhappy with his statement, using strong words, claiming that Matalon "has enough sense to understand how to read the situation".
It's difficult, if not impossible, to get behind the thought processes of these esteemed gentlemen. Was it really a claim that we'll be better off for having begun to tackle the descent to "violence as an organising principle" in Jamaican politics? That the claimed $600 million loss to business is actually worth it? That as Seaga suggests, Tivoli lives are thought of as expendable, representing the 'masses' whom the 'classes' have always 'dissed' with impunity. Or is it that we have really begun to tackle the problem of garrison politics and its inexorable descent to failed statehood?
This column has for years suggested that the major problems facing the Jamaican economy is not about economics at all. Here's another suggestion: garrison politics is a response to our inability to provide a sustainable future for our burgeoning youth population cohort. After the unprecedented - at that time - violence of the 1980 election, it was clear as day that garrisons were armed to the teeth. We lived with that understanding.
The fastest-growing enterprise since those times became the security business. Consider adverts in the press, among billboards, guard dog genetics, proliferating gated communities, 'guardee' wherever you turn. These were reliably predictable responses to insecurity generated by a society in which the 'have-nots', having placed their trust in a politics of change, of betterment, of 'jobs and more jobs', came to view the system - claiming much in 'deliverance' and 'jingling money in the pocket' - as delivering nothing. They came to view this system as loaded against them. Our reggae and dancehall artists owe much of their immense popularity to the 'raw truth' of so much they tell.
Another response, that of our governments, was contracts awarded to business partners of 'dons'. This was a simple way to create business enterprise that would filter resources to the dispossessed. Believe it or not, talk to the people, the youth unemployed, the boys on the corner, 'Presidential Click' and 'Incomparable Enterprise' are iconic realisations of success to thousands of the urban poor! It is possible, born in the ghetto, belonging to the black underclass, to become 'smaddy' in Jamaica! Dancehall artistry after all, is not the only way - there's another. That is the reality we must grasp.
Inner-city garrisons
Beyond that, the calm and security demonstrated in inner-city garrisons are testimony to the effectiveness of these responses. This calm, however, requires the business of crime to migrate to places outside the domain of the politically protected don. If it is indeed true that a don in his garrison provides food, Nike shoes, schoolbooks and examination fees, 'policing and justice', 'passa passa' fêtes, protection from marauding neighbouring garrison 'fryers', protection from the police and the State, among other things, then the operation of the past week solves nothing.
Business enterprise must grow if people are to find jobs. Perception of the good life and how to attain it must be influenced, if not specifically shaped, by education rather than cable TV. Becoming gunman must cease being the ambition of 10-year-old youths in the urban community. Last week's siege of Tivoli, will be mere 'noise', unless policies to provide for the requirements dons normally deliver are put in place.
Messrs Matalon and Seaga may disagree on the how, but surely they have "enough sense to understand how to read the situation". Business might indeed be enhanced by crime. Yet, business without crime ought always to be the goal. And here we must insist that so-called white-collar crime perhaps dwarfs the impact of the mango thief. Perception that the 'tap o' de stream dutty', that plenty business resemble crime, is not easy to eradicate. Big-up our conscious, often embattled, contractor general! So many questions; who, pray, has answers?
Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist