Mark Wignall | No full circle at Crab Circle

Suggesting that the corporate sponsors who had made Crab Circle into the attractive set of crab-selling stalls should have installed bathroom facilities and running water is not a pragmatic solution. The same logic would have to be applied to the man who exits his lane and sets up a jerk chicken pan from 6 p.m. to midnight. At the thousand and one spots all across the country.

I am certain that Wray and Nephew must have thought that the southwest corner of National Heroes Park could not bear any more despoilment on top of the northern section ‘uglified’ by its dirty stain of a car park.

One assumes that the vendor caught defecating in a bucket there was not at school on the day that basic bathroom hygiene was taught. Oh, you say, that was never taught, and you’re right. Fact is, if you can get through basic reading, writing, and adding up a few numbers, chances are that somewhere in the mix it will come home to you that you cannot defecate where you eat or dispense food. Preferably screamed to you in the street language we all know.

Sometimes, however, social blight and a set of people in a community having an unviable view of themselves can lead to an entire community dominating individual behaviour of the residents. A late pollster, university professor and Gleaner columnist once wrote about a bright youngster living in a tough garrison community in the 1970s who would conceal his books because he did not want his friends and consorts to know that he was ‘soft’ by going to school.

OUTBREAK OF ‘WAR’

In the late 1990s, two rough, inner-city communities had an outbreak of ‘war’, which involved fire-bombing of houses, high-powered weapons, and bullets. During a ceasefire, I ventured into one high-rise community where the physical blight was heart-rending but instructive. On many of the top floors of the high rises, the toilets had been removed and the water connection disconnected. An empty paint pan was placed to cover the filth and the stench.

An older resident, in disgust, told me :”Don’t mek dem lie to yu. Is dem tek out di toilet and sell dem. An some a dem still s… in di hole.”

I was taken to an open land that had a mountain of a pile of black scandal bags. To the majority of the residents, that pile was the final resting place of the human bodily waste. The smell was unbearable, but I was the only person suffering. They no longer smelled it.

Young women pranced around with only panties on as they bathed by wash basins in a common area downstairs. Young children walked barefooted as toilet water seeped through cracks in the concrete, and the maggots were huge and many.

The community paid nothing in utility bills. No one from NWC or JPS could dare disconnect. Plus, some of the older residents who had moved along in life had their apartments seized from them and they could no longer visit the community to collect rent.

The default setting of the police was that the young men in the community were potential gunmen and they were often treated as such. The politicians ran a few government contracts occasionally and visited once every five years to fill a few more bellies and collect the expected votes.

In such a community, the open expression of genteel behaviour and civility had no utility. Crapping in a bucket by the wayside? What’s the big deal?

If a lesson has been learnt by the Crab Circle vendors, it must be that they must divest themselves of previous behaviour. No big book needed.

PM, EASE THE TENSION NUH MAN

Last Thursday’s Observer cartoon captured a tone that made me feel quite uneasy. It is a single frame that perfectly captures a socio-political problem that needs urgent attention. Integrity Commissioner dressed in the sombre tone of black. He is dutifully signing off on the opposition leader’s Declaration of Assets. The opposition leader glances to his left. At Prime Minister Andrew Holness. Who represents the Government. Mark Golding wants to snicker, but he doesn’t quite do so.

The prime minister looks ill at ease with the next move in the scenario. The thing that is required of him.

A few years ago when the Ruel Reid scandal invaded the news space, I suggested that the PM should have a sit down with his Cabinet members and say to them all words to this effect. ‘Tell me no what onnu have boiling in the pot that I may need to know about.’ In other words, he doesn’t want any surprises. At this stage, on top of the ferocity of a spate of murders, the nation can do without unforced errors from the highest office.

The last poll results did not create the friendly fire for the PNP that it could use to launch an effective political campaign against the ruling JLP. It seems to me that the PNP needs about a seven-point lead to really get the JLP into a pile of twisted noodles.

But I need to tell the prime minister this. PM, I voted for you in the last two elections. I voted for the PNP in 1993, 1997, and 2002. I am not now feeling any great urge to vote for the PNP, but I have been there before, so it is not an impossibility.

You have me in a spot, PM. I want to vote for you next time out because,as a non-religious man, I have invested some amount of faith in your abilities to be a transformative leader. But PM, it seems as if you are into this unforced error of wanting to bus mi bet on faith in you.

For now, prime minister, paste that Observer cartoon on one wall of your study at home under the urgent ‘to do’ items. Don’t place it on any wall in your bedroom. No, you need your rest, PM.

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.