Ronald Thwaites | Resisting change

It is as if there is a mad-house script being followed. Could the chaotic drama on our roads really be so brilliantly spontaneous? But then, if there is indeed a pattern to it all, which evil genius could be its author?

It is my firm contention that the mayhem on our roads both reflects and creates our broader national characteristics. Thomas Aquinas taught that law either induces or restrains action. He taught that we should craft and enforce laws to lead people to choose life and mutual well-being. Instead we do the opposite – often by resisting change.

Take our driving and riding habits for a start. The fundamental law on Hope Road and almost elsewhere, is to get ahead at all cost. What matters is to secure personal advantage even if it means endangering or inconveniencing others. To ‘shub through’ is manifestation of my power and reinforcement of my worth – and for many, their virility.

ROAD CHAOS TELLS DEEPER STORY

I interpret this as a showpiece of the dominant ethic of several aspects of Jamaica’s social order. Help me break it down. First of all there is no training in why rules of the road are beneficial, what they enjoin and why they should be enforced. How many are familiar with the Road Code? Instead of driver, rider and pedestrian education, appropriate for a congested, sub-optimal road system, users are left to be miseducated by the chaos which confronts them. Can the outcomes be in any doubt?

LIBERTY VERSUS LICENCE

This mind-set is the consequence of inadequate home training, banal media stimuli and the absence of civic values being centrepiece in the school curriculum. So people pick-up what it means to be Jamaican and how we ought to behave from what they experience on the street. Like many Americans proved to themselves and to the world last week, we debase freedom by deliberately confusing it with licence to do whatever we can get away with or force others to accept.

Every day students learn profound lessons just by travelling to and from school. Their behaviour displays this crass learning in the classrooms and, inevitably, later in life. Everyone suffers.

Correcting this distemper requires the modelling of good, not slack, road use. Right now the ‘blue light’ pretentiousness of the governing elite (they call them WaBenzi in Swahili); the raw advantage-demanding police vehicles and the leggo-beast horde of taxis, combine to set the stage for the rest of us to follow. If these self-privileged groups – all under state control – would set a better example, general behaviour would alter over time.

A further remedy lies in the socialisation we purvey at the early childhood level. Despite the crisis in literacy and numeracy, our far more dangerous problem is that of inadequate socialization. The habits of self-respect, self-restraint and discipline introduced and reinforced at the youngest age are likely to be durable. The early childhood school experience should be devoted entirely to the formation of good human beings and conscious citizens. Achieve this and the learning skills which we are now trying to force-feed infants, will come later. Morris Dixon understands how crucial the infant school period is to national development. Will she be able to overcome the entropy of the existing system to foster radical change?

DESPERATE ROAD CONDITIONS

The continuing rainfall is showing up the shoddy roadwork across the country. Not even the billions Nigel arranged before leaving will be sufficient to fix them properly in time for the election. And who will guarantee the quality of the work being done? What if quality is again sacrificed for quantity? Consider the cries of the municipal councillors from both parties over the last few rainy days. Vested with responsibility from their electorate, they have no power to mitigate even the most dangerous situations. Every urgent expenditure has to be referred to Desmond’s ministry or to the National Works Agency where kisses go by favour. So what’s the point? Why fuss to become a eunuch where you exert plenty effort but achieve no results?

REPRESENTATION?

Which political party is going to commit to the principle of subsidiarity whereby municipalities are given a high level of agency and autonomy? As of now, councillors appear content to be mendicants of central government. Where is their self-respect?

Sadly too but realistically, the same is true for backbenchers and opposition members of parliament. So much for the social preferment and the undeserved big money.

Despite your inability to really improve your constituents lives, you and your family will be marked with the leprous designation of a ‘politically exposed person’ for the rest of your life. Why do we do this to ourselves?

Instead of flogging a dead horse, the Constitutional Reform Committee should betake itself to promote the reforms which the people really want and that would include the entire structure of the political system which we bequeathed to ourselves from those whose intentions were to have us consider division a virtue.

OTHER THINGS

Two other topics drawn from last week’s events. First, the police will never wear body cameras. They are not going to open themselves to self- incrimination. As it is, they have licence from the highest authority to act with impunity. Why do we think they will provide evidence otherwise?

After inexcusable delays spanning several years, parliamentary consideration of the Tobacco Control Act has resumed. So urgent should be the need to suppress this murderous habit that we could just have changed the nomenclature and borrowed the perfectly serviceable Trinidad model law years ago. During our twisting, turning and compromising, thousands of Jamaican young people, absent effective regulation and public education, will have become addicted to vaping and tobacco use. On their premature journey to Dovecot, they will soon leave an expensive trail of sickness, sadness and wasted potential: another instance of us failing to make changes which are well within our grasp and which could cause us to flourish.

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