Jamaica, What Next?

Even though I haven’t lived in Jamaica for the past 22 years I am no less inter­est­ed in how our coun­try is run now,than when I left in 1991. I thought about how I could be of ser­vice to coun­try, despite not liv­ing there. Having decid­ed to offer opin­ions and facts on events and hap­pen­ing as I see them, I am also aware of the lim­i­ta­tions involved in get­ting peo­ple to focus on large texts of infor­ma­tion. Those are not the only chal­lenges faced by a blog­ger like myself. We Jamaicans have lit­er­al­ly locked our­selves into two box­es, one orange, the oth­er green. This places us at a dis­tinct dis­ad­van­tage, as far as pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion, even when we are thou­sands of miles removed from Jamaica’s parochial pol­i­tics. We process every­thing Jamaica, with­in the con­text of pol­i­tics, some­times bor­der­ing on the insane. Even in the face of irrefutable facts ‚we balk we yell, using noise to over­whelm truths we find incon­ve­nient. We demo­nize each oth­er ‚we label each oth­er, we dis­par­age each oth­er sim­ply because we dis­agree with their point-of-view.

The Jamaican Dollar is now over 100 to one American Dollar, vir­tu­al­ly worth­less. The coun­try have secured a loan from the International Monetary Fund this was seen as a major vic­to­ry for the coun­try. I wrote in these blogs that you know the coun­try is in trou­ble when secur­ing a loan is seen as a major accom­plish­ment. I also warned that that loan would be sim­i­lar to cot­ton-can­dy, sweet to the taste yet bad for your health.

It did not take long for the sweet­ness of that cot­ton-can­dy to show how bad it can be for your teeth and sug­ar lev­els. Ronald Thwaites recent­ly told prospec­tive teach­ers grad­u­at­ing from col­lege “gov­ern­ment have no mon­ey to hire you”. This state­ment even as he is embroiled in an epic strug­gle with teach­ers already on the gov­ern­men­t’s pay-roll, over issues of study leave.

The rape and mur­der of chil­dren is now com­mon prac­tice. Elderly peo­ple are sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed, none is spared the wrath of Jamaica’s demon­ic killers, includ­ing law-enforce­ment offi­cers. The hous­ing trust tells pub­lic sec­tor work­ers who have paid into that fund and are still employed ‚that they do not qual­i­fy for mort­gages, yet the Prime Minister rolled out her new plan called Urban Renewal which is aimed at pro­vid­ing hous­ing to Jamaica’s urban poor. The prob­lem with this bit of feel good, is that these peo­ple have no mon­ey to pay for the hous­es they are slat­ed to receive.

The coun­try’s inter­est pay­ment oblig­a­tions on for­eign loans gob­bles up almost one-half of its gross domes­tic prod­uct. So they bor­row more to fill the short­fall, which exac­er­bates the prob­lem fur­ther, because with each loan guar­an­tee comes the added bur­den of a larg­er piece of the GDP pie going to debt servicing.

The coun­try has record­ed a 1.5 % growth, neg­li­gi­ble for a coun­try like Jamaica.

Jamaica remains one of the most high­ly indebt­ed coun­tries in the world. Interest pay­ments as a per­cent of GDP were high­er than any­where else in the world in 2011, includ­ing cri­sis-rav­aged Europe. This exceed­ing­ly large debt bur­den has effec­tive­ly dis­placed most oth­er pub­lic expen­di­ture, debt ser­vic­ing has tak­en up near­ly 50 per­cent of total bud­get­ed expen­di­tures over the last four fis­cal years while health and edu­ca­tion com­bined have only been around 20 percent.This sit­u­a­tion is very prob­lem­at­ic for a coun­try of Jamaica’s income lev­el, which should be able to invest in infra­struc­ture and human cap­i­tal, as well as have the finan­cial flex­i­bil­i­ty to respond to fre­quent nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and oth­er exter­nal shocks.http://​www​.cepr​.net/​d​o​c​u​m​e​n​t​s​/​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​2​012 – 05.pdf

People are los­ing their prop­er­ty to squat­ters, who invade and erect zinc struc­tures, just like dur­ing the 70’s why not that’s social­ism right?

The coun­try’s clue­less Prime Minister when not embar­rass­ing the coun­try by open­ing her mouth, has decide to stay mute as the titan­ic sinks. She opened it recent­ly to pro­nounce quote “I will not talk myself out of office” . If that moron­ic state­ment was not so rep­re­hen­si­ble it would be worth a laugh. Never mind every­thing is all about her stay­ing in office. You get the lead­er­ship you deserve.

Holness the oppo­si­tion leader, seem absolute­ly clue­less about what path to take to res­cue the coun­try from this immi­nent col­lapse. Those of us who are look­ing for a return of civil­i­ty, or a place where droves of Jamaicans are in a hur­ry to return to may have a very long wait.