Editorial | Honouring Shelly

This newspaper endorses the resolution of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) to award the Key to the City of Kingston to the iconic Jamaican athlete, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.

We hope this is the beginning of a larger movement by the KSAMC and other local government authorities to recognise their outstanding residents, as well as national achievers, and to build civic pride in their communities.

The symbolic presentation of the keys to their parish capitals is the highest honour Jamaica’s municipal authorities can bestow on people they seek to recognise for significant achievements and/or worthy deeds.

Ms Fraser-Pryce will be a worthy recipient not only of the Key to Kingston, but of having a road in Waterhouse, St Andrew, where she grew up, named in her honour.

And while this award will be a decade after she was presented with the Key to Montego Bay, a city on the island’s northwest coast, this one – without diminishing that earlier recognition – is likely to be highly cherished.

Indeed, Kingston is Jamaica’s capital, and largest and most important city. More importantly, it is Ms Fraser-Pryce’s town. She is a Corporate Area girl. And being recognised by one’s own community and/or country is usually special.

BROADER CONTEXT

But Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce’s broader context is important.

Her stellar achievements in global track athletics – that she is the greatest female sprinter of all time – are well known: 24 medals at the Olympics and the World Championships, including two gold in the 100 metres at the former, and five at the latter. She was a silver medallist twice in the 100m at the Olympics and a bronze winner once.

In the 200 metres, she won gold and silver once at the World Championships, and silver once at the Olympics. There were several other medals as part of Jamaica’s 4x100 female relay teams at both the Worlds and the Olympics.

Then there is Ms Fraser-Pryce’s endurance. She has been at the top or near the pinnacle of global athletics since her gold-winning performance at the Tokyo Olympics in 2008, often defying injury. After nearly two decades she remains an internationally competitive athlete. Few athletes, except perhaps for fellow Jamaican Merlene Ottey, have displayed such staying power.

While her performance on the tracks would have, of itself, validated Ms Fraser-Pryce’s greatness and her worthiness of the honour, she is not defined solely by her talent on the tracks.

She has leveraged that talent, her charisma and empathy to do good.

As Waynette Strachan, the KSAMC councillor who moved the motion to grant Ms Fraser-Pryce the Key to the City, observed: “Honouring Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce with the Key to Kingston is not only a tribute to her success on the track, but a celebration of her role as an ambassador for Jamaica’s culture, a mentor, and a symbol of hope.”

Indeed, Ms Fraser-Pryce has been an ambassador for the United Nations children’s organisation, UNICEF, and her personal foundation, Pocket Rocket, named for her famously blistering start out of the blocks, supports children, especially with their educational/school needs.

PRESTIGE TO AWARDS

Notably, Ms Fraser-Pryce, on her journey through one of Jamaica’s leading high schools, university and as a global athletics star, has never forgotten her roots in Waterhouse, a gritty urban community. And neither has it weighed her down. Rather, she has made her journey inspirational without it being cloying or maudlin.

It is this positive attitude and message of hope The Gleaner believes that the KSAMC and other parish governments have an opportunity to encourage by acknowledging deserving people with a range of awards. They can bolster this by performing in ways that lend prestige to those awards.

The councils have merely to do the basics: deliver the services they are obligated to provide to communities, and communicate with citizens with honesty when things go awry. They must eschew corruption, embrace transparency, and dedicate themselves to efficient government and decent governance.

With respect to naming a road in Waterhouse in honour of Ms Fraser-Pryce, the KSAMC should commit itself to making this the start of the observable difference.

Across the Corporate Area, and elsewhere in Jamaica, roads and facilities, including schools, are named for famous Jamaicans and international personalities. But too often they are unkempt and the institutions underperforming, undermining the honour intended for the people for whom they are named. That should not be allowed to happen to the prospective Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce Road in Waterhouse, St Andrew.

The KSAMC, as should be the case with all roads everywhere, must ensure that the drains are cleaned, the verges trimmed, and garbage collected.

These are the small, inexpensive things to accomplish. They, however, demand concentrated effort, which tends to elude Jamaica’s bureaucrats.

They should prove us wrong.