Orville Taylor | From 2024 to 2025

Just like that, 2024 is a memory. Like every other year, it has been one of heartbreaks, surprises, some unfulfilled promises, and yet, there has been a lot for which we should give thanks

Being the track and field buff that I am, my highs and lows are definitely in this field. And speaking of field even now my jaw is still on the ground that Rojé Stona won Olympic gold in the discus, and despite the similarity in pronunciation, it is not from chatting or throwing words.

Of course, like everyone else, I desperately wanted to silence American sprinter, Noah Lyles, inasmuch as he and his mother have treated his fiancée Junelle Bromfield with more love and respect than she could possibly have expected here. After all, she might not be gold medal material; but she definitely trapped the gold medallist. Months after being beaten by 1000th of a second, we all share the disappointment and shock of Kishane Thompson inexplicably losing in a time two hundredths of a second slower than that in which he jogged.

Also painful was the fact that Oblique Seville has still not been able to get the monkey off his back, and for the third straight global competition, made the final but got injured and could not medal.

Some redemption came in the Diamond League, with Tajay Gayle beating the odds and punching his ticket to next year’s World Championship. Then, running perhaps the best race of his life, Ackeem Blake took the ‘matter’ out of our eyes, and the season ended with a restoration of the tradition of a Jamaican male 100 metres champion.

As for the women, no one expected that the three fastest active sprinters, all Jamaican, would have been injured at different points and unable to compete. No Elaine, no Shelly, and no Sherieka.

WE ARE RISING

Yet, track and field epitomises what it is that we are as a people, and again we are rising.

They are so good, that God had to make two of them, because such talent cannot be contained in only one body. At 20, Tia and her double world junior champion sister Tina, are in the camp where almost all world and Olympic champions were trained over the last two decades.

Do not blink in 2025, because sub-11 in the 100 metres, might not even make our national finals in June.

In between NCAA 60 metre champion, Brianna Lyston and World U20 Champion, Alana Reid, there are a few from Sprintec, who are going to surprise.

Anyway, in as much as track and field is a staple; there are more serious things.

In a year in which homicides are on target to decline by 17 per cent, dipping below 1,200 for the first time since 2016, we had to face the gruesome killing of our colleague Barbara Gayle.

As said over the years, the homicide detectives in Jamaica are so good; one should be afraid to even kill time. Therefore, the speed with which her murderer was caught, is more the norm rather than the exception.

As for the constabulary, there were many positive signs in 2024. One of our behavioural sciences graduates, from the House of Babylon has promised me a continued trend to reduce homicides to below 1,000 by 2026. Fingers crossed, because, I recall the promises, albeit from a politician and not policeman.

Notwithstanding this, some very sensible officers, are now PhDs, adding flesh to my common assertion that ‘not everyone with a doctorate, is an idiot.’ Trust me, I know a few, including some whose relationship with mendacity is historic.

For the record, the overall upgrading of the skills and knowledge in the public sector is something which warms my heart.

UPLIFT

An associated uplift in the quality and integrity of our political leadership is needed.

In 2024, akin to the perceived impasse, which occurred between the Independent Commission of Investigations, and the constabulary, we now have what looks like a swordfight between the government and the Integrity Commission (IC)

Although it might be too late to matter, one should be mindful that the IC, is never likely to lose an election due to its ‘loss of credibility’. A word to the wise…

The general election is due within the next nine months. However, it might be possible for the date to be stretched to January 2026. Never mind that the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) lost ground to the opposition People’s National Party (PNP), which is now eight percentage points ahead. Major movement in 2024.

Stranger things have occurred with such leads, and ‘there’s many a slip, ’twixt the cup and the lip’.

As shocking as it was to some incredulous Jamaican naysayers; Donald Trump won again as I predicted.

For Jamaica the ‘working poor’ are who always determine the outcome of elections. The party that has the support of organised labour, and workers on the whole, typically win. Included in this are the public sector unions. The obverse is also true.

Indeed, if a party wants to kick over its bucket of milk, it only needs to turn the ‘non partisan’ majority of the police rank and file against it.

Check the historical pattern since the 1980s to now.

Since January 2024, there has been brewing labour discontent. Our major industry, tourism is showing signs, which are reminiscent of earlier periods in our history. There are still unresolved issues in the security sector.

June 2025 marks 50 years since the passage of the Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act. Opposed by the PNP when introduced by the JLP in 1971, it was then vilified by the JLP over its own clauses in 1973, when it was placed on the agenda by the PNP.

Whatever happens in 2025, we will see. But, based on the methodology used by my social scientist colleagues, poverty has declined, and so has unemployment. Those are facts.

Yet, it is not employment that matters but ‘decent work’.

Happy New Year.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.