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=ReggaeMike;219137]In response to both you and Don1, I will point out that reforming the system is a distraction to the real problem - the people in it. As I pointed out before, many other systems around the world have been tried and in each and every case a corrupt bunch of people have managed to subvert it. Cuba the early 1900s had a constitution very much like Americas and even had term-limits before the Americans and what difference did it make? Well they got Batista running the show from behind the throne to avoid the term-limits problem (imagine Bruce or Portia running the show with Ken Baugh/Daryl Vaz or Omar Davies as their puppets - it would be even worse because the real leaders would be unaccountable) and then they got Batista formally running the show as president. In the Philippines we had Ferdinand Marcos and his wife of the many shoes. In Pakistan we got military type folks taking over and in some countries in Africa we got apartheid in one country and various dictators in others. In Germany they once had a constitution (the Weimar constitution) so progressive that one of it's provisions was that every university graduate was to be given a copy of the constitution itself upon graduation - guess who subverted that?
However jamaica being so top down imho... a couple people of goodwill at the very top can make a tremendous difference...start us down that long road back to civility.
Waiting for an enlightened leader is partly what got us here. Remember who was being called Joshua and shown as a sort of messiah figure?
It is true that enlightened rulers can come about, but waiting for our equivalent of Tsar Alexander II might be a long time in waiting (and it might never happen - remember Alexander II appeared 240 years into his dynasty and about 120-130 years after the last fairly good ruler Peter the Great). Plus no enlightened leader to my knowledge has ever emerged in a system over which they did not have great or absolute control (think Lincoln and Alexander II). At this point we would have to be waiting for an enlightened don to emerge and then for said don to scale back the activities of the garrisons and allow the politicians that he thinks are enlightened to run the show. It is hard to see how it could work in reverse, because as I think you and Don1 have pointed out the garrisons now control the MPs and not the other way around.
It is true that enlightened rulers can come about, but waiting for our equivalent of Tsar Alexander II might be a long time in waiting (and it might never happen - remember Alexander II appeared 240 years into his dynasty and about 120-130 years after the last fairly good ruler Peter the Great). Plus no enlightened leader to my knowledge has ever emerged in a system over which they did not have great or absolute control (think Lincoln and Alexander II). At this point we would have to be waiting for an enlightened don to emerge and then for said don to scale back the activities of the garrisons and allow the politicians that he thinks are enlightened to run the show. It is hard to see how it could work in reverse, because as I think you and Don1 have pointed out the garrisons now control the MPs and not the other way around.
So if that is the way it is going to be then we might as well just all ship out, hope Jamaica descends into enough brutality and criminality that the outside world is bothered to respond and then hope for the US, UK and others to come in, kick the door in and wipe out the dons and connected politicians. Either that or hope for a near Rwanda-type traumatic event which somehow manages to wipe out the majority of dons and criminals and leave those remaining far to weak to actually resist proper law enforcement.
The self government movement came out of the diaspora...NYC to be exact...with the Jamaica Progressive League...Adolphe Roberts et al
It could be that the diaspora may have to lead the needed reform.... once again.
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