Is Portia’s Jet-setting Worth The Price?

There has been bur­geon­ing con­ster­na­tion in cer­tain quar­ters of Jamaica and the Diaspora about what is seen as the fre­quen­cy of the Prime Minister’s over­seas trav­els. I am not sure about the laws which gov­ern trans­paren­cy of Government actions, least of all the actions of the coun­try’s chief exec­u­tive. I would not be sur­prised if there real­ly is no way to tell, if the way they han­dle the Contractor General’s requests and oth­er queries on Governmental irreg­u­lar­i­ties are any­thing to go by. Notwithstanding the Government has released a fig­ure of J$50 mil­lion, sug­gest­ing that that num­ber rep­re­sents the cost of the Prime Minister’s trav­els. Now let me say I have seen no infor­ma­tion which refutes these num­bers but cal­cu­lat­ing the $50 mil­lion Jamaican Dollars at the rate of J$105 TO US $1, it amounts to just over US476’000 .

I find it incred­u­lous that all her trav­els criss­cross­ing the globe from Africa to Asia, to Europe with del­e­ga­tions only amount­ed to US$476’000 . No one is mak­ing the argu­ment that the Nation’s chief exec­u­tive should not trav­el out­side the coun­try. The nature of the job demands that the Prime Minister trav­el abroad. What peo­ple are con­cerned about are whether the trips are absolute­ly ben­e­fi­cial to the coun­try in these eco­nom­ic crunch times, and the dis­re­spect­ful silence of the Prime Minister , who refus­es to answer ques­tions from the Jamaican press on these and oth­er issues. As is to be expect­ed there are no short­age of well-placed polit­i­cal hacks who are quick to explain that the num­bers are not astro­nom­i­cal and that the PM must trav­el to seek eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties for the coun­try. That is the rea­son we must be rather wary of the fig­ures they make avail­able. It is rather too con­ve­nient and mod­est, jux­ta­pose that with the cho­rus of sup­port for Portia’s trav­els and it begs seri­ous scrutiny.

The real con­cern ema­nat­ing from this issue, at least for me, is that they fun­da­men­tal­ly believe it is good eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy to bor­row mon­ey from the Chinese and every­one else who will reward their grov­el­ling, then spend it on flights of fan­cy, [pun intend­ed] sup­pos­ed­ly seek­ing invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. People keep ask­ing about a “growth plan” for the coun­try which I sup­pose would make the immense aus­ter­i­ty on the peo­ple.….. say worth­while. Unfortunately if you take a look at social­ist doc­trine there is noth­ing in there which speaks to eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty. Now these Clowns who run the Govt, aren’t real Socialists, they are wag­gonists. With that said, we know they nev­er had any plan for gov­er­nance when they were returned to pow­er only four years after los­ing office after an unprece­dent­ed 18 ¹⁄₂ years in pow­er. Socialism is about wealth re-dis­tri­b­u­tion, gen­er­al­ly to their cronies and friends. It has noth­ing to do with eco­nom­ic empow­er­ment of the mass­es. Travelling abroad in the hope of per­suad­ing com­pa­nies to invest in Jamaica will pro­duce naught, when the com­pa­nies already there are rapid­ly clos­ing. Crime, Corruption, Extortion, High ener­gy costs, high-tax­es, Government bureau­cra­cy, and a host of oth­er busi­ness-bust­ing vices are deal­ing a death-blow to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic life. Companies look for the most busi­ness-friend­ly places to oper­ate. Jamaica long ceased being a busi­ness-friend­ly place. The vary­ing enti­ties which extort busi­ness­es, Government, Unions, un-elect­ed crim­i­nals, are more than enough to fright­en poten­tial investors. People who run suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es are gen­er­al­ly smart peo­ple. The same can­not be said for many politicians.