Where There Is No Vision The People Perish

As the People’s National Party wraps up it’s 77^th annu­al con­fer­ence yes­ter­day there appeared to be no change in the excite­ment and fer­vor in the vot­ers as they glee­ful­ly attend­ed the con­fer­ence decked out in par­ty colors.
I spoke to a pub­lic sec­tor work­er recent­ly who is a sup­port­er of the Opposition Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) he resigned­ly pre­dict­ed that the PNP will be returned to pow­er when­ev­er the Prime Minister decides to call National Elections. Ahast I asked him how he arrived at that opin­ion with the present state of affairs in the country?
He told me with calm detach that despite all the neg­a­tives in the coun­try there is no outrage.

Jamaica has had some tur­bu­lent upheavals dur­ing times of hard­ship and uncer­tain­ty. During the sev­en­ties peo­ple ran in droves from the coun­try tak­ing their wealth , their busi­ness­es and their exper­tise at the urg­ing of left­ist Prime Minister Michael man­ley. Even though it was counter intu­itive many peo­ple to this day still see the lat­er apolo­getic Michael Manley as a great leader of epic pro­por­tions. Never mind that after the colos­sal screwup of the Island’s econ­o­my Manley tak­ing a hia­tus of sorts, then came back and apol­o­gized . Many saw noth­ing wrong with the irrepara­ble harm Manley did to the country.
Additionally, some Caribbean polit­i­cal relics for­mer cahoots of Manley who were more con­cerned with ide­o­log­i­cal social engi­neer­ing than the wel­fare of the peo­ple, still believe he was a great leader.

Which brings us to present day and the fright­en­ing decline in every mea­sur­able met­ric of the stan­dard of liv­ing of Jamaicans. My friend argues that no mat­ter how expen­sive food and oth­er basic neces­si­ties are the peo­ple are con­tent. Which caused me to won­der are the peo­ple con­tent , or are they (1) resigned to their fate, or (2) do not know they deserve better?
If for noth­ing else would­n’t the malaise. cor­rup­tion, crime, deval­u­a­tion, infla­tion and gen­er­al sense of dys­func­tion cause peo­ple to want change?

Between 1972 and 1980 things got bad in Jamaica , real­ly bad. Then

Leader of the Opposition Edward Seaga launched his cam­paign on the theme (DELIVERANCE IS NEAR) to retake the coun­try from the rav­ages of the so called demo­c­ra­t­ic Socialism a social exper­i­ment gone bad.
Today the very same ves­tiges of Democratic Socialism which cre­at­ed the largest brain drain of any small nation are still in place yet the peo­ple like Sheep to the slaugh­ter march duti­ful­ly to the beat of the same drums which destroyed the nation’s econ­o­my between 1972 and 1980.