Ronald Thwaites | ‘Di sinting deh’…

“How mi mus know if mi have di sinting deh”?

“What sinting?” I asked.

“Di Corolla sinting.”

Esmie lives in a big yard downtown in a room shared with her baby-father, her elderly mother who uses Pampers and two or three children, depending on the runnings. She has a cough, fever and chronic bad feelings, of the type usually reserved for when her wutlis man shows up. About thirty souls in the yard share one broken-down toilet.

She has difficulty understanding how “social distance” figures in her life. She watches news religiously and so is confused and afraid by what she has heard. Worse, the lawyer lady who gave her a little tidy-up work has laid her off. Her pardner draw will be in arrears. She asks if her TRN will be enough to qualify her for any of Dr. Clarke’s benefits. She does not know the meaning of “statutory deductions”.

Advised to call one of the COVID-19 numbers, her credit almost runs out before she is advised to go to her “family doctor”. Who? Later when the fever gets worse and the mixture of garlic and sinkle-bible is not working, she calls the hospital, is shunted to the nurses’ station, told that they will put in a request for the ambulance, which has gone for laundry, to come for her. That hasn’t happened.

My big hope and abiding doubt centers around whether the present system of political economy and its derivative bureaucracy, allows us to rise to the devastating crisis facing us: to go beyond the slick and well-intentioned health and economic plans and fuse them into real, urgent and radical achievements on the ground – to meet the needs and fears of the many like Esmie.

The health, education, security and financial systems are turgid and slow to react. Esmie needed a quick diagnosis and couldn’t get one. Crucial institutions are peopled by persons who are afraid too and have never faced so complex a crisis as this virus presents.

How do we really know who is infected or contagious if only 250 have been tested? It is like a duppy. Elusive, but you know it is there. How do we project the impact of the “Corolla” on our lives, the national economy, if the attempts at measurement are so full of conjecture?

What we do know is when the duppy box us. The biggest lick so far has been the decimation of the tourist industry in no more than a month or so. That has been followed by a body-blow to the flow of remittances. And there is more to come.

Consensual leadership is going to be crucial. Everybody’s confidence and trust in our government is indispensable for survival and quick recovery.

This is why the first half hour or so of Nigel Clarke’s Budget closure last Tuesday was so disappointing. He, same one, acknowledged that this was no time for trashing the Opposition and then, with reflexive tribalism, frighteningly resembling the Donald we grimace at hearing every night on TV, did exactly what he said he would not do. The quibbling over who had divested Carib Cement was absurd - to put it mildly.

And apart from revisionist history, do we learn anything from the past? Who can forget the futile attempts to criminalize price gouging of two generations ago? It does not work. Spend time to keep the shelves stocked instead.

And which small business owner (and you need not even mention the time-sensitive agricultural sector) does not know the torture of seeking credit when the development bank money has to pass through the constipated intestines of affiliated financial institutions who prefer car loans and credit cards to small business and who add finders fees, high margins and months of delay while demanding three years of audited accounts and a guarantee from your grandparents?

GLORY BE

Nigel, before the stimulus reaches the “people”, it will get absorbed in the “profits”. You mean well but is so it set! The good good part of the speech came when Andrew was trying to help you and promised (yes, we all heard it!) that you all would arrange for the opening of special bank accounts for the unbanked, retrenched and poverty-stricken, “with less fees”. Glory Be. When, how, where? Fitz, did you hear that?

Then otherwise: Congratulations to Karl Samuda for accepting the sensible suggestion to send the lunch money for the PATH students to the parents. Please now go the extra mile and provide for the many other tens of thousands who need to be on PATH. The school principals can tell you who they are. They are hungry, too.

And lastly, as bad as the threat of “di sinting deh” is, when speaking about our Constitution, what does the following quote mean: “those of us who are here in Government have to take actions in real time to deal with issues that are unfolding before us. We don’t have the luxury of sitting down and getting into niceties...”?

Look here, defending human rights and complying with constitutional principles are never “niceties”. Dangerous stuff. Remember the NIDS case?

Ronald Thwaites is member of parliament for Kingston Central. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com