Ronald Thwaites | A so it set

“If you Big Man know how to eat a food, why man like me mustn’t tek some too”? That was the response of the clerk in the municipal office who, unashamedly, demanded a sizeable “blessing” in order to allow correction of an inconsequential clerical error on a housing development application.

The alternative was to start the long process all over. “My wife go to your church and is you same one give her envelope to put in money. Where she to get it from, if you don’t “bless”me now? You think salary can cover all that ? And how back to school a go pay for? Don’t is you say that parents must pay school fees! If big man tek any amount of pay dem want, what small man fi do”?

Then there was the landlord whose tenant owed plenty rent. He turned up with the police in tow one Friday afternoon to collect the sum due, plus 50 per cent. When no money was forthcoming and objection taken to the add-on, the tenant was locked up. When a friend came to his rescue on Sunday, the sum owed was paid to the creditor. The rest of the money, it turned out, was a “blessing” claimed by those who had enforced the detention and the higher official whose permission was required to secure the release of someone who had patently been falsely arrested.

These things happen with increasing frequency. Jungle justice through official channels. And there is no recourse. After all, the issue of the stalled development approval would have languished purposely on some official’s desk for months while interest costs made the entire project unviable with many jobs lost. Going to court to collect a debt can delay you for more than a year and cost you more than the blessing did. A so it set!

SUPPOSED TO KNOW

It is pointless trying to remind people that one is no longer a political representative. You were there: you supposed to know how the “runnings” go. There is a momentum gathering traction in Jamaica now which will have political consequences. The common feeling is that corruption has reached new and brazen levels. Nigel really thought that splashing more money on the public service would improve attitude and productivity.

The big salary increases, especially for the overlords, are causing revulsion among ordinary folk as they struggle with the peril of Beryl on top of the already punishing cost of living. The public relations jags by the police, JPS and the government are so opposite to the ordinary life experiences of the majority that they cause dissonance instead of reassurance. Some of the state agencies and officials obviously don’t care any more that their propaganda releases and behaviour are so unbelievable.

DID THE PM AGREE?

Despite the weak effort to walk back the original announcement, the strongest objection must be made of the threat to shut down, on flimsy pretext, the work of parliamentary committees – especially those chaired by the Opposition. The Public Administration and Appropriations Committee is the citizen’s only mechanism to monitor trillion dollar Budget expenditure. To reassure accountability and trust, both dangerously low and both vital in a democratic society, that Committee should be sitting at least twice a week – more often than the lazy full house chooses to work. Did the Cabinet sanction this over-reach, tantamount to a muzzle, a betrayal of the public interest?

It is clear that this administration is afraid of the embarrassment which the searching questions by committee members often elicit. So they try to control the agenda, absent their members to frustrate a quorum, or now, in desperate panic, want to arrogate the power to suppress meetings.

This is bully-ryghin, Warmy-esque authoritarian behaviour resembling the style of Rosa Murillo, Imelda Marcos or Marie Antoinette rather than the wise, compassionate strictness of a Violet Neilson. Unchecked, parliament is further demeaned.

WHOSE RESILIENCE?

Dr Clarke points to his zeal in culturing “resilience” in the economy as his major achievement. In the face of as yet uncounted but massive hurricane repair costs, fiscal prudence and the accumulation of reserves are indeed essential. But the process has come at a cruel and continuing price. Official inflation figures do not reflect the cost of food and housing to the low-income majority.

State support for education and health, while sizeable, is badly compromised by waste and inefficiency. It would be politically suicidal to insist on productivity and accountability in the MDAs of this nation. More and more government MPs are heard begging their constituents for patience. The message is that “trickle -down soon come”. They are delusional. The mood of the citizenry right now does not match the touted resilience of the macro-economy teetering on its two-legged stool of tourism and remittances.

I sense a momentum of surly disengagement which will be difficult to reverse. My barometer is the increasing number, reducing age and greater productive capacity of those lining up at each dawn in front of the foreign embassies.

COUNCILLORS NEUTERED AGAIN

Hear too the predictable, baneful cry of Mayor Thomas of Portmore, last week. His constituents are ravaged by storm damage; he is reduced to begging the Local Government Minister for an allocation to Councillors to ease the distress of the needy. Although they dare not say so in public, his plea is echoed by all local government representatives who were elected last February. Consider the perverse indignity: entrusted by the people to serve their most parochial and immediate needs but having to grovel, mostly in vain, for resources to do so.

Instead all the shackles go to the members of parliament because it is constituency seats, not municipal ones, which determine who forms government. With a year or less before elections, Mr Holness knows he is whistling in the wind when he advises MPs to be even-handed in expending their inadequate largesse. And by the way, how is the big-ticket SPARK programme to fit in with Beryl road restoration?

Cho man, a so it really set?

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com