WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS.

The Kern Spencer crim­i­nal trail con­tin­ues in the Kingston Resident Magistrate Court yes­ter­day . Spencer a for­mer Junior Minister in the Energy Ministry was charged joint­ly with his for­mer exec­u­tive assis­tant Coleen Wright almost five years ago with fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing. The case has seen many twists and turns, motions and counter motions specifics of which we have brought to your atten­tion. Yesterday 55 year old Justice of the Peace Everol Orr tes­ti­fied that Spencer gave him checks total­ing 4.5 mil­lion Jamaican dol­lars to con­duct a mon­e­tary trans­ac­tion at the Santa Cruz branch of the Jamaica National Building Society. He was instruct­ed to pur­chase a Money Order in the sum of US$60.000. Orr told the court the mon­ey was not intend­ed to pur­chase goods or ser­vices at his St Elizabeth Wholesale estab­lish­ment.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​4​9​980.

This case has gone on long enough . It has sur­vived a motion by the Presiding Magistrate Judith Pusey ‚which would have lit­er­al­ly gut­ted the Prosecution’s case, had the motion being upheld, (see chatt-a-box archives). As we approach the Yuletide sea­son I reflect on what 4.5 mil­lion dol­lars may pur­chase to aid the poor. I am vehe­ment­ly opposed to hand­outs, I am equal­ly opposed to depen­den­cy. All my life I have worked hard for what I want­ed. Yet I believe that Government has a moral oblig­a­tion to those among us who are very young and very old. Our Nation is in seri­ous cri­sis , Jamaicans yet unborn are seri­ous­ly indebt­ed to inter­na­tion­al lenders for mon­ey they nev­er ben­e­fit­ed from, and there are no infra­struc­ture to show for it .

Last week I donat­ed a sin­gle com­put­er from my busi­ness to my old Primary School, the Bonnet Primary School in North East Saint Catherine. I men­tioned it not because I want to be rec­og­nized for that sim­ple act, I do so because the school did not have a sin­gle com­put­er. Essentially it remained the way it was when I was in Elementary School. I was hap­py to do so, and pledged to con­tin­ue to use my com­pa­ny to aid the school going for­ward. I encour­age you all to do what you can to help. Just pri­or to the last hur­ri­cane hit­ting our coun­try , one elder­ly woman was inter­viewed and she told the media all she was able to pur­chase was a lighter and a sin­gle stick of Candle. Tears welled up in my eyes, she was unable to afford the most basic of neces­si­ties, clean drink­ing water and some canned foods. We are bet­ter that that, I nev­er met her yet I cried when I read her sto­ry. As the most junior Politicians fat­ten them­selves from the pub­lic cof­fers, the most vul­ner­a­ble of our peo­ple go with­out the most basis life sus­tain­ing necessities.