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Losing the PNP wicket
Mark Wignall
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Given all of the community neglect and the general poverty in her hilly district close to the border of St Catherine and St Ann, I find it amazing that 54-year-old Doris Brown (not her real name) has no time to be discouraged or fall into any moments of depression.
She is up each morning at 6:00 to prepare breakfast. On the day I met her, the morning fare was stewed saltfish liberally mixed with tomatoes and okra along with a pot of boiled dumplings, yam and sweet potato. Earlier she had handed me a glass of what had to be the most delicious sorrel drink I had ever had. "Every Christmas a dry some and use it all year round," she told me. Seated on her shiny, concrete verandah, I was having a casual chat with her about living in rural Jamaica.
"Mi have five children and except for one, all a dem deh a foreign. Nuh matta how much wi love Jamaica, it seem like Jamaica nuh love wi," she said, in between stressing how life has been hard on the people in her community. "Di one whey deh wid mi now, she different from she likkle. She get some subject and get a nice job in a office in Brown's Town. Di baby whey yu did hear crying is hers. It one-year-old an when di pregnancy tek har a say to miself, me nah mek nutten mash up har life. So me mind di baby when she gawn work and har wutliss man whey come from town jus a mek pure promise."
To the more educated, it may appear that simple folk like Doris and her family have no direction and no sense of purpose beyond placing pressure on an already burdened country. As a poor farming family, they work with what they have which is poor education - a staple for too many of the rural poor - the attendant lack of opportunities, the need to "go a foreign", fear of living in Jamaica's capital and a healthy distrust of politics.
Were it not for the land and meagre scratch farming, people like Doris and her family would be "sucking salt". "Is PNP country dis but fi tell di truth, it funny dis time," said Doris.
"People a grumble an grumble an it nuh look so good." A brother who lives with her and is the main force directing the farming had been overhearing our conversation. As he passed by the side of the house, he said, "Dem di dey too long, is time dem lose dem wicket." We both had a healthy laugh over his timely quip.
Reports that the PNP is in trouble in South-West St Elizabeth and that all it will take to reverse the ruling party's fortunes is a tour of the area by Prime Minister "Her Almighty" Portia Simpson Miller is indicative of the rot which has set in in the PNP. All of the politicians from the era of the 1970s are firmly trapped in that period when all of the worst of our tribal politics was unleashed on us, courtesy of their full embrace of what the street dictated was "the rules of engagement".
Eddie Seaga, Portia Simpson Miller and Bruce Golding as leaders recent and present were all, to varying degrees, willing students/teachers of the politics of those times, although Golding in a transitional dispensation has been the only one with the cojones to truly define the nastiness of it and his utter dislike of what it did to him and the country.
One would have thought that we have moved past the foolish days of the late 1970s when popular singer Johnny Clarke, who reeled off hit songs in that time, wrote Jah Jah bless Joshua. Some of the lyrics of that song, (done to the tune of the then very popular None shall escape) referring to Michael "Joshua" Manley read as follows:
"Hip hip hooray, Hip hip hooray. Jah Jah bless Joshua because Joshua a nuh saps. Jah Jah bless Joshua, cause Crash Programme nah go stop. No capitalist shall escape in this time, These words were spoken by Joshua. So run capitalist, run. Run and socialise with the sufferer."
Eddie Seaga was one of those who believed that all he had to do in the terrible 1980 election campaign to shore up support for weak JLP candidates was tour the area for a few hours and, boom, a win is on.
Today, the PNP which has been at the batting crease has been there for too long. The umpires have become weary and hungry and need to use the bathroom. Increasingly, the batting has become suspect and even in the case of poor bowling, not many runs are being scored. Someone or about 500,000 people need to tell the PNP that very few are still in the stands and the only ones cheering are those having lunch.
Still the ruling administration, practising the only game it knows, still believes that poor people like Doris all have a winding key on their backs and all the PNP has to do is make a few turns of it and, poor Doris, "she get ketch again".
Years ago when the government sold Mirant a majority of JPS's shares, it did so not because Mirant had mounted a convincing argument that it intended to retool and replace the old fuel-guzzling gas turbines with more efficient diesel units. The PNP government, which had made only the pretence that it "put people first", never did have the people's interest at heart, or it would have stressed to Mirant that the Jamaican people had to be an integral part of that deal. In other words, outside of the special adjustment clause (exchange rate), keeping down costs to the consumer had to be as important as Mirant making a decent profit.
When the government sold the majority shares in JPS because it had run Jamaica broke, Mirant also had that information. Operating from a position of weakness, the government bent over and told Mirant to do to the people of Jamaica whatever it felt like doing. On the government's behalf, Mirant surely gave it to us - long and hard.
According to Clive Mullings, the JLP's spokesman on energy, "JPS has a tariff arrangement that ensures that WE pay their income tax obligations while Mirant gets income-tax concessions in the United States of America. How could ANY government, the people's servant, EVER enter into such an arrangement? Is this their idea of loving poor people?"
The problem with this PNP administration is dishonesty. When it sells JPS to Mirant because the country is broke, it then turns around and tells us that we have got a good deal.
The fact is, while the PNP was selling off the bed, the fridge and the stove because since 1989 it has run this country into the red, members of the PNP and those connected to its navel string have been lounging by the swimming pool while transnationals like Mirant chalk up another one for its business savvy, and poor Jamaicans like Doris, not knowing the details, can wait only until the PNP train passes through in another month or so.
Unfortunately for the PNP, that train is going to be surely derailed. Hip, hip, hooray for Jamaica!
- observemark@gmail.com
Mark Wignall
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Given all of the community neglect and the general poverty in her hilly district close to the border of St Catherine and St Ann, I find it amazing that 54-year-old Doris Brown (not her real name) has no time to be discouraged or fall into any moments of depression.
She is up each morning at 6:00 to prepare breakfast. On the day I met her, the morning fare was stewed saltfish liberally mixed with tomatoes and okra along with a pot of boiled dumplings, yam and sweet potato. Earlier she had handed me a glass of what had to be the most delicious sorrel drink I had ever had. "Every Christmas a dry some and use it all year round," she told me. Seated on her shiny, concrete verandah, I was having a casual chat with her about living in rural Jamaica.
"Mi have five children and except for one, all a dem deh a foreign. Nuh matta how much wi love Jamaica, it seem like Jamaica nuh love wi," she said, in between stressing how life has been hard on the people in her community. "Di one whey deh wid mi now, she different from she likkle. She get some subject and get a nice job in a office in Brown's Town. Di baby whey yu did hear crying is hers. It one-year-old an when di pregnancy tek har a say to miself, me nah mek nutten mash up har life. So me mind di baby when she gawn work and har wutliss man whey come from town jus a mek pure promise."
To the more educated, it may appear that simple folk like Doris and her family have no direction and no sense of purpose beyond placing pressure on an already burdened country. As a poor farming family, they work with what they have which is poor education - a staple for too many of the rural poor - the attendant lack of opportunities, the need to "go a foreign", fear of living in Jamaica's capital and a healthy distrust of politics.
Were it not for the land and meagre scratch farming, people like Doris and her family would be "sucking salt". "Is PNP country dis but fi tell di truth, it funny dis time," said Doris.
"People a grumble an grumble an it nuh look so good." A brother who lives with her and is the main force directing the farming had been overhearing our conversation. As he passed by the side of the house, he said, "Dem di dey too long, is time dem lose dem wicket." We both had a healthy laugh over his timely quip.
Reports that the PNP is in trouble in South-West St Elizabeth and that all it will take to reverse the ruling party's fortunes is a tour of the area by Prime Minister "Her Almighty" Portia Simpson Miller is indicative of the rot which has set in in the PNP. All of the politicians from the era of the 1970s are firmly trapped in that period when all of the worst of our tribal politics was unleashed on us, courtesy of their full embrace of what the street dictated was "the rules of engagement".
Eddie Seaga, Portia Simpson Miller and Bruce Golding as leaders recent and present were all, to varying degrees, willing students/teachers of the politics of those times, although Golding in a transitional dispensation has been the only one with the cojones to truly define the nastiness of it and his utter dislike of what it did to him and the country.
One would have thought that we have moved past the foolish days of the late 1970s when popular singer Johnny Clarke, who reeled off hit songs in that time, wrote Jah Jah bless Joshua. Some of the lyrics of that song, (done to the tune of the then very popular None shall escape) referring to Michael "Joshua" Manley read as follows:
"Hip hip hooray, Hip hip hooray. Jah Jah bless Joshua because Joshua a nuh saps. Jah Jah bless Joshua, cause Crash Programme nah go stop. No capitalist shall escape in this time, These words were spoken by Joshua. So run capitalist, run. Run and socialise with the sufferer."
Eddie Seaga was one of those who believed that all he had to do in the terrible 1980 election campaign to shore up support for weak JLP candidates was tour the area for a few hours and, boom, a win is on.
Today, the PNP which has been at the batting crease has been there for too long. The umpires have become weary and hungry and need to use the bathroom. Increasingly, the batting has become suspect and even in the case of poor bowling, not many runs are being scored. Someone or about 500,000 people need to tell the PNP that very few are still in the stands and the only ones cheering are those having lunch.
Still the ruling administration, practising the only game it knows, still believes that poor people like Doris all have a winding key on their backs and all the PNP has to do is make a few turns of it and, poor Doris, "she get ketch again".
Years ago when the government sold Mirant a majority of JPS's shares, it did so not because Mirant had mounted a convincing argument that it intended to retool and replace the old fuel-guzzling gas turbines with more efficient diesel units. The PNP government, which had made only the pretence that it "put people first", never did have the people's interest at heart, or it would have stressed to Mirant that the Jamaican people had to be an integral part of that deal. In other words, outside of the special adjustment clause (exchange rate), keeping down costs to the consumer had to be as important as Mirant making a decent profit.
When the government sold the majority shares in JPS because it had run Jamaica broke, Mirant also had that information. Operating from a position of weakness, the government bent over and told Mirant to do to the people of Jamaica whatever it felt like doing. On the government's behalf, Mirant surely gave it to us - long and hard.
According to Clive Mullings, the JLP's spokesman on energy, "JPS has a tariff arrangement that ensures that WE pay their income tax obligations while Mirant gets income-tax concessions in the United States of America. How could ANY government, the people's servant, EVER enter into such an arrangement? Is this their idea of loving poor people?"
The problem with this PNP administration is dishonesty. When it sells JPS to Mirant because the country is broke, it then turns around and tells us that we have got a good deal.
The fact is, while the PNP was selling off the bed, the fridge and the stove because since 1989 it has run this country into the red, members of the PNP and those connected to its navel string have been lounging by the swimming pool while transnationals like Mirant chalk up another one for its business savvy, and poor Jamaicans like Doris, not knowing the details, can wait only until the PNP train passes through in another month or so.
Unfortunately for the PNP, that train is going to be surely derailed. Hip, hip, hooray for Jamaica!
- observemark@gmail.com
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