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New people needed, not new political party
Mark Wignall
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The car is parked directly in front of the church in the semi-rural district and the loud boom of the car radio is enough to drive a bat out of the confines of the proverbial hell.
A church service is not being conducted on that Tuesday evening but a summer school is being held there for young children. The owner of the car seems to be in his early 40s and I am appalled that he just doesn't get it.
Someone passing by speaks to him about the loud music and he acts as if there was no verbal interaction. He stands beside his car speaking to a friend and they laugh disdainfully at the passer-by.
BLAINE... Will her New Nation Coalition be another brief bit of fresh air?
BLAINE... Will her New Nation Coalition be another brief bit of fresh air?
1/1 
Men unzip their pants outside bars and urinate against light posts and that is just as normal as sections of Jamaica can get. A roadside garage springs up outside an old woman's gate. She is a retired teacher and her voice can no longer compete with the expletives and the sound of car engines sputtering. So she learns to live with it in her "glorious" retirement years.
A woman comes out of her car and walks into a shop. A young unemployed man hanging around, about 25, says to her, "A would a tun yu upside down now!" The woman, in her early 20s, glares at him and says, "Don't you have any sisters, don't you respect them?"
He responds, "Yu a nuh mi sister. Mi woulda &%$# yuh now." She shakes her head in disgust and although she has encountered that before, she feels no less disrespected. In her mind, it is just Jamaica and par for the course.
A traffic cop pulls over a woman but in between telling her that the right rear light of her car is out, he is seeking her phone number and smiling with her in a very unprofessional manner. She learns and plays the game with him. "But mi call di number and mi hear nutten a ring."
"That phone is at home. When I get there I will see the missed call and call you back," she says. He smiles and she drives off without a ticket.
At all levels in Jamaica there is a distinct lack of order. The small business employer underpays his worker and the worker in turn has no loyalty to the small organisation, so he steals what he can. In government organisations the ultimate objective seems to be to stall those who want to get ahead.
In many of our schools the better teachers are fighting a losing game against students who have no home training, yet the parents, usually single mothers, are never tired of complaining that "di pickney nah learn nutten".
As our political leaders issue grand speeches about our macro-economic situation, human development as an objective seems always to be sinking beneath the radar. After 48 years of political independence and too many years spent in the wilderness with the PNP and JLP, we now have another political party formed and although it is early days yet, the initial signals from the NNC indicate a party which is going to be making up the rules as it goes from day to day.
Feeling left out, especially as it had gained some form of media traction in the early days of the Dudus explosion and extradition, the NDM wants us to know that it is now in a process of transformation. If the NNC has proved any early clout, then that is it. It has awakened the NDM.
It is my conclusion, however, that Jamaica will not advance as a result of any new political party. New thinking is needed. The NNC hopes to plug into that vast population of people who have become disillusioned with the PNP and the JLP. Ditto the NDM in 1995 until its effective demise in the years following 2002.
There seems to be no shortage of new thinking in the political parties present. Once a party attains power and the harsh realities of the strictures of governance are unveiled to the new thinkers, there is a natural tendency to give in to the pragmatism driven by those realities. Often the new thinker grows quiet as he is sucked in by those realities.
Jamaica's effective literacy rate is in excess of 65 per cent, yet we are told that it is anywhere between the high 70 per cent and low 80 per cent. Which political party can govern a people made up of that stuff?
The PNP and the JLP go through the motions every five years and in between a few incremental advances, the leaders know that the real problem is not with the raw material among the leadership of the parties but the raw material in the wider population.
Politicians cannot tell the people the truth so they sell them impossible promises. The times need a brave politician from either the JLP, the PNP, the NDM or the NNC to tell our people that they have been failing themselves for too many years. As long as that raw material exists in its present unyielding form, nothing meaningful is likely to happen.
With an effective unemployment rate of 50 per cent in Jamaica and the problems of literacy and numeracy, Jamaica will remain as it has for the last 30 years - ungovernable!
While there is no doubt that the level of debate has grown in that time, it is still below the level needed to take us into an understanding of the real relationships between those who govern and the people. In plain language, until Jamaica has a sense of order in all spheres, it will remain at the bottom of the economic pile in the region and top of the heap in murders.
Praedial larceny, mob violence, night noises, disrespect for women, our children and old people are the norm in this country. How can we develop on that footing?
At the very least we know that the old tribes, the veterans, the PNP and the JLP have long given up on bringing radical changes in those areas. With the advent of new political parties, especially the NDM when it was formed in 1995, many of us invest a bit of hope that a new Jamaica may emerge. But if all a new political party hopes to do is seek a new platform to teach an old message of celestial hope, then it seems that we are better off with the old tribalists and our long-established destructive tendencies.
The fever which gripped this nation when the NDM came on the scene in 1995 and 1996 was a contagious one. And when it faded in our eyes because we were too used to what was too bad for us, we came back home to ourselves. And what we saw in the mirror was not pretty.
Will the NNC be another brief bit of fresh air, only to fade in a few years?
observemark@gmail.com
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...-party_7873357
Mark Wignall
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The car is parked directly in front of the church in the semi-rural district and the loud boom of the car radio is enough to drive a bat out of the confines of the proverbial hell.
A church service is not being conducted on that Tuesday evening but a summer school is being held there for young children. The owner of the car seems to be in his early 40s and I am appalled that he just doesn't get it.
Someone passing by speaks to him about the loud music and he acts as if there was no verbal interaction. He stands beside his car speaking to a friend and they laugh disdainfully at the passer-by.
BLAINE... Will her New Nation Coalition be another brief bit of fresh air?
BLAINE... Will her New Nation Coalition be another brief bit of fresh air? 1/1 A woman comes out of her car and walks into a shop. A young unemployed man hanging around, about 25, says to her, "A would a tun yu upside down now!" The woman, in her early 20s, glares at him and says, "Don't you have any sisters, don't you respect them?"
He responds, "Yu a nuh mi sister. Mi woulda &%$# yuh now." She shakes her head in disgust and although she has encountered that before, she feels no less disrespected. In her mind, it is just Jamaica and par for the course.
A traffic cop pulls over a woman but in between telling her that the right rear light of her car is out, he is seeking her phone number and smiling with her in a very unprofessional manner. She learns and plays the game with him. "But mi call di number and mi hear nutten a ring."
"That phone is at home. When I get there I will see the missed call and call you back," she says. He smiles and she drives off without a ticket.
At all levels in Jamaica there is a distinct lack of order. The small business employer underpays his worker and the worker in turn has no loyalty to the small organisation, so he steals what he can. In government organisations the ultimate objective seems to be to stall those who want to get ahead.
In many of our schools the better teachers are fighting a losing game against students who have no home training, yet the parents, usually single mothers, are never tired of complaining that "di pickney nah learn nutten".
As our political leaders issue grand speeches about our macro-economic situation, human development as an objective seems always to be sinking beneath the radar. After 48 years of political independence and too many years spent in the wilderness with the PNP and JLP, we now have another political party formed and although it is early days yet, the initial signals from the NNC indicate a party which is going to be making up the rules as it goes from day to day.
Feeling left out, especially as it had gained some form of media traction in the early days of the Dudus explosion and extradition, the NDM wants us to know that it is now in a process of transformation. If the NNC has proved any early clout, then that is it. It has awakened the NDM.
It is my conclusion, however, that Jamaica will not advance as a result of any new political party. New thinking is needed. The NNC hopes to plug into that vast population of people who have become disillusioned with the PNP and the JLP. Ditto the NDM in 1995 until its effective demise in the years following 2002.
There seems to be no shortage of new thinking in the political parties present. Once a party attains power and the harsh realities of the strictures of governance are unveiled to the new thinkers, there is a natural tendency to give in to the pragmatism driven by those realities. Often the new thinker grows quiet as he is sucked in by those realities.
Jamaica's effective literacy rate is in excess of 65 per cent, yet we are told that it is anywhere between the high 70 per cent and low 80 per cent. Which political party can govern a people made up of that stuff?
The PNP and the JLP go through the motions every five years and in between a few incremental advances, the leaders know that the real problem is not with the raw material among the leadership of the parties but the raw material in the wider population.
Politicians cannot tell the people the truth so they sell them impossible promises. The times need a brave politician from either the JLP, the PNP, the NDM or the NNC to tell our people that they have been failing themselves for too many years. As long as that raw material exists in its present unyielding form, nothing meaningful is likely to happen.
With an effective unemployment rate of 50 per cent in Jamaica and the problems of literacy and numeracy, Jamaica will remain as it has for the last 30 years - ungovernable!
While there is no doubt that the level of debate has grown in that time, it is still below the level needed to take us into an understanding of the real relationships between those who govern and the people. In plain language, until Jamaica has a sense of order in all spheres, it will remain at the bottom of the economic pile in the region and top of the heap in murders.
Praedial larceny, mob violence, night noises, disrespect for women, our children and old people are the norm in this country. How can we develop on that footing?
At the very least we know that the old tribes, the veterans, the PNP and the JLP have long given up on bringing radical changes in those areas. With the advent of new political parties, especially the NDM when it was formed in 1995, many of us invest a bit of hope that a new Jamaica may emerge. But if all a new political party hopes to do is seek a new platform to teach an old message of celestial hope, then it seems that we are better off with the old tribalists and our long-established destructive tendencies.
The fever which gripped this nation when the NDM came on the scene in 1995 and 1996 was a contagious one. And when it faded in our eyes because we were too used to what was too bad for us, we came back home to ourselves. And what we saw in the mirror was not pretty.
Will the NNC be another brief bit of fresh air, only to fade in a few years?
observemark@gmail.com
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...-party_7873357