What Happened To Jamaica We Once Had Leaders, Didn’t We?

The tiny Island-nation of Barbados recent­ly became a repub­lic, effec­tive­ly tak­ing charge of its own des­tiny while main­tain­ing a rela­tion­ship with Britain that is based on mutu­al respect.
This was a long time com­ing for the tiny island nation of 287,371 cit­i­zens whom many Jamaicans over the years libeled as hav­ing a colo­nial­ist men­tal­i­ty, one that was still shack­led to the old slaver, England.
Look who is colo­nial­ist now!
Or is it that despite the brava­do and bull­shit attempt at con­vinc­ing our­selves we are so bril­liant, we Jamaicans are just a bunch of weak-mind­ed descen­dants of slaves still suf­fer­ing from Stockholm syn­drome? Too dumb or too full of shit to pull the coun­try’s nose from the rear end of our sov­er­eign lady the queen? (sic).

Early last Tuesday morn­ing, as the coun­try took the reins to full auton­o­my, Prime Minister Mia Mottley said: “We believe that the time has come for us to claim our full des­tiny.
The tiny Island Nation decid­ed on 72-year old Sandra Mason, a for­mer Governor-General, to be its first pres­i­dent as a full free sov­er­eign nation.
“Today, debate and dis­course have become action,” Ms. Mason told the onlook­ers gath­ered in the cap­i­tal, Bridgetown. “Today, we set our com­pass to a new direc­tion.”
Those of you who fol­low this medi­um know that one of the things I have called for over the years is for our coun­try Jamaica to shed Britain and chart our own des­tiny. What, oh, what could Jamaica gain from main­tain­ing sec­ond-class cit­i­zen­ship under its old colo­nial dom­i­na­tor England?
How could a nation that pro­duced Bustamante, Norman Manley, Hugh Shearer, Michael Manley, Marcus Garvey, & Bob Marley con­tin­ue to be a nation of pre­tenders, men­tal­ly strick­en with the malig­nant con­di­tion Stockholm syndrome?

I, too, believed that Barbados appeared clos­est aligned to Britain and what she stands for of all the so-called inde­pen­dent English-speak­ing Caribbean nations. However, I may have missed that on a per capi­ta basis, Barbados has one of the high­est lit­er­a­cy rates in the world,96.6%, accord­ing to world pop­u­la­tion review.
That has to count for some­thing. It has to fac­tor in what new­ly installed pres­i­dent Sandra Mason said, “Today, debate and dis­course have become action’.
Not asi­nine mind-numb­ing igno­rant bang­ing on desks and hurl­ing child­ish insults at each oth­er. Not arro­gance and igno­rance, not brava­do and balder­dash, and damn sure not pre­tense that they are some­thing they are not.
Debate and dis­course becom­ing action.

In the video pre­sen­ta­tion above, I spoke of a time when every­one in the English-speak­ing Caribbean respect­ed us and want­ed to emu­late us. They did­n’t both­er cor­rect­ing out­siders who mis­took their accent for our Jamaica accent. Our coun­try was respect­ed and revered; she was con­sid­ered the cen­ter of the Caribbean; when Hugh Shearer or Michael Manley spoke, they were basi­cal­ly speak­ing for the entire region.
Today our coun­try lost most of our man­u­fac­tur­ing to Trinidad. The arro­gance of our union­ized work­ers who believed that being union­ized was a license to be rude, abra­sive, and lazy effec­tive­ly helped to dri­ve all of our com­pa­nies away to Trinidad & Tobago, anoth­er proud Republic.
Quality con­trol Worker caught sleep­ing on the job got fired, this led to work stop­page and demand that pro­duc­tion stopped until the errant work­er was reinstated.
What com­pa­ny would want to oper­ate in that kind of insane cor­rupt, and law­less environment?
Corrupt politi­cians allowed their gangs to extort the remain­ing com­pa­nies, run away util­i­ty, and oper­at­ing costs drove the final few away.

A coun­try so law­less that feed­er nations tell their nation­als to only stay in all-inclu­sive resorts if they decide to risk vis­it­ing our coun­try. Truth be told, most of our res­i­dents in the dias­po­ra choose the rel­a­tive safe­ty of the all-inclu­sive hotels when they ven­ture home. And who can blame them for tak­ing the nec­es­sary steps to secure them­selves and their families?
The down­side to the fore­gone is that the mon­ey spent in the all-inclu­sive hotels end up in the pock­ets of rich hote­liers over­seas, most of whom are [not] Jamaicans.
If the tourist dol­lar hard­ly gets any fur­ther inland than the major hotels on the shores, it is easy to see how the aver­age Jamaican is get­ting short-changed by not hav­ing access to vis­i­tors who once pur­chased arts and craft, sam­pled restau­rants and bars, and oth­er businesses.
All of this is because of the cri­sis of lead­er­ship that took over our coun­try from the ear­ly ’70s through to the present.
There may be the per­cep­tion of con­tra­dic­tion in my state­ments relat­ed to Michael Manley, whose grave errors may have pre­cip­i­tat­ed the nev­er-end­ing decline we are in as a coun­try. Still, it would be unfair to ignore Michael Manley’s con­tri­bu­tion in awak­en­ing aware­ness in Jamaicans to the need for self-reliance, auton­o­my, and agency.
Michael Manley was a walk­ing con­tra­dic­tion; his pol­i­tics was as alien to me as Mars is to earth. I do believe, how­ev­er, that had Michael Manley lived today, he would be lament­ing that his coun­try is still inex­plic­a­bly teth­ered to the skirt tails of Britain, still choos­ing to smell the foul wind from her racist backside.

Look at what we have become; a nation of pre­tenders, thieves, scam­mers, hus­tlers, mur­der­ers, rapists, and abusers of our chil­dren — a nation with the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion as one of the most vio­lent places on our planet.
A nation where our lead­ers refuse to course-cor­rect their own mis­takes because they are too arro­gant to say,’ I made a mistake.
A nation in which we plug the port­holes, orga­nize the deck-chairs, and strike up the band on the sink­ing Titanic.

.

.

.

.

.
SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.