Opposition’s Call To Lock The Country Down Seems Calculated…

I total­ly get the notion of not being a sheep, being able to think for one’s self, not fol­low every instruc­tion duti­ful­ly with­out ques­tion­ing whether it is in one’s best inter­est.
On the oth­er hand, not fol­low­ing instruc­tions sim­ply because of a rebel­lious atti­tude, is a net neg­a­tive that can have grave con­se­quences indi­vid­u­al­ly & col­lec­tive­ly.
The stay at home direc­tives by the Jamaican Government and the ensu­ing acts of defi­ance in some com­mu­ni­ties, has roots in a cul­ture that has been left to fes­ter for way too long. It is one of total defi­ance, and liv­ing out­side the bound­aries of the law.

As for the stay at home orders them­selves, the gov­ern­ment has been mea­sured in its lead­er­ship, not act­ing in a dra­con­ian way, but steadi­ly bal­anc­ing the eco­nom­ic needs of the coun­try against the need to ensure there is no mas­sive spread of the COVID-19 virus among the 2.8 mil­lion cit­i­zens.
In artic­u­lat­ing that point, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said: “We can­not shut down the econ­o­my; this would cre­ate anoth­er type of cri­sis where peo­ple can­not access the goods and ser­vices they need.”
I total­ly agree with the Prime Minister’s assess­ment, addi­tion­al­ly, we are a coun­try with an expo­nen­tial­ly large per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion that is not liv­ing from pay­check to pay­check, they are liv­ing from one meal to the next.
For these poor­er folks, stay­ing at home is a lux­u­ry they sim­ply can­not afford.
[Like the woman in the Bible who told the prophet that all she had was some flour in a bar­rel and some oil to make one meal for her and her son, after which they would die from hunger], those folks have to make a deci­sion whether to stay home and die from hunger, or risk get­ting infect­ed by going out and hus­tling for their next meal.

The Prime Minister is also cor­rect when he said: “We are not plac­ing a dol­lar val­ue on life; every life is impor­tant, but for the Government to be effec­tive in pro­tect­ing your life we still need to have rev­enues. Cutting off eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty lessens the abil­i­ty of the Government to spend on increas­ing the capac­i­ty of the health care sys­tem. The gov­ern­ment, there­fore, has to bal­ance care­ful­ly.”
Remarkably, the oppo­si­tion PNP was silent as the admin­is­tra­tion embarked on this mea­sured approach, bal­anc­ing sav­ing lives and ensur­ing that there remained some eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty.
All while deal­ing with the igno­rance of some in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties who bla­tant­ly flout­ed the stay at home orders, not because they need­ed to get out to work and pur­chase food, but because they want­ed to par­ty and demon­strate that they could open­ly, brazen­ly and defi­ant­ly, dis­obey rules and reg­u­la­tions.
The Opposition par­ty could have decid­ed to set aside pol­i­tics just this once and act­ed in the inter­est of the nation’s greater good, rather than in the inter­est of scor­ing cheap polit­i­cal mileage.
That, how­ev­er, would have been too much to ask of the PNP, to stand with the gov­ern­ment and demand that peo­ple obey the stay at home orders as best they could.
That did not happen.

It is for those rea­sons that the recent state­ments of the for­mer chief med­ical offi­cer, PNP care­tak­er for St Catherine East Central Winston De La Haye, call­ing for a full lock­down of the coun­try seems spu­ri­ous at best.
Speaking to the media De La Haye argued:

“We need to move from chas­ing the virus to pre­vent­ing infec­tion. There is one way of doing that, and I’ll has­ten to say as a pub­lic health offi­cial, it is clear to me that at this point we need to ensure, in an appro­pri­ate way, that we shut the coun­try down”.
“What’s going to hap­pen is that we’ve start­ed with St Catherine; next is like­ly to be Kingston and St Andrew, then anoth­er parish, and anoth­er mov­ing around the mul­ber­ry bush. As obtained in Italy, the expe­ri­ence has been there… let’s not repeat those mis­takes. Now is the time to make plans, ade­quate plans, not in the man­ner in the exper­i­ment of Tuesday night with St Catherine, ade­quate plans to shut the coun­try down.”
De La Haye a psy­chi­a­trist, seems to need to have his head exam­ined.

A total lock­down of the coun­try can­not hap­pen with­out the econ­o­my suf­fer­ing seri­ous con­trac­tion. Already the coun­try is forced to look at going back to the International Monetary Fund to secure fund­ing.
As my read­ers know quite well, I am at odds with the gov­ern­ment on that issue as I believe that the coun­try’s finan­cial health can be reme­died if the Government took cer­tain steps to reme­di­ate the intran­si­gent and bur­geon­ing vio­lent crime epi­dem­ic cur­rent­ly plagu­ing the coun­try.
Nevertheless, those are con­cerns for anoth­er time. For the rea­sons I stat­ed about the pover­ty lev­els in the coun­try, it is also an impos­si­ble task of ask­ing the entire coun­try to stay at home when they have no food to eat, and in many cas­es, they don’t even have drink­ing water.
Forcing peo­ple to stay inside under those con­di­tions is a pre­scrip­tion for open revolt.
Could that be what the oppo­si­tion par­ty wants to see for its own polit­i­cal viability? 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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