Jamaica independent? Really?

Thanks to the performance of the Jamaican women's 4x100 metre  team on  Independence Day Friday 6th August 2021, we really had something exceptional to celebrate.

These ladies, Briana Williams, Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson also clocked a national record 41.02 seconds for Jamaica's first gold in that event since 2004. So, building on the other gold medals won  by Parchment and the ladies in the 100 metre, plus the silver and bronze medals brought home by the other star performers in the previous days, our athletes once again wowed the world and made us so proud.

What a wonderful gift for our struggling nation on the 59^th anniversary of our ‘independence’ from Britain!

While I, like everyone else, was overjoyed by the performance of those who medaled, I would like to take this opportunity to celebrate all the elite athletes who represented Jamaica at the 2020 Olympics, whether they medaled or not.

For just qualifying to reach the top of their careers by qualifying to compete in the Olympics is an outstanding feat. While we tend to only see the final results, their success did not come by accident but it took years of dedicated training and discipline to qualify.

 I am therefore personally proud and thankful for all our young athletes who mek Jamaica tek shame outta wi yeye as we celebrate another year of ‘independence’.

For apart from the prowess of these disciplined individuals year in year out, when one reflects on the counter-productive political shenanigans which landed us with economic disasters like FINSAC and the violence ridden society that we have built since independence, there is not much else to celebrate.

Look at the per capita income in US$’s of some other Caribbean islands which got independence after us; Bahamas- 23,671, Barbados-16,237, Antigua $16,176, Trinidad 15,459, Dominica 7,091, Jamaica $4,934.

Fact is, we have the lowest per capita income of all the former British colonies in the Caribbean!

So here we are, though blessed with a myriad of natural resources, yet we have really failed to gain a modicum of economic independence and social stability during those 59 years.

Apart from the economic and social failures, the question I keep asking is how can we be called independent when we, the first English speaking Caribbean country to declare ‘independence’, remain so steeped in mental slavery that we insist on retaining a foreign head of state?

And not even a good foreign one either, when we consider the brutality with which Britain treated our ancestors during slavery and colonialism!

This unacceptable situation remains although both parties, JLP and PNP, which have alternated in government since independence, have at one time or the other promised to enact the necessary constitutional change to correct that unsavory situation. But guess what they say is holding up the process?

The PNP wants an executive president while the JLP wants a ceremonial president. In the meantime, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and soon Barbados, (once known as Little England) have not dithered on the issue.

One the other hand, as if to entrench this love for the racist British monarchy, our own prime minister Andrew Holness in July 2021, accepted appointment to the British Privy Council!

All this is the midst of Caricom now taking a decisive and cooperative approach in demanding reparations from Britain for their brutality, rape, murder and exploitation of or ancestors during slavery and colonialism and their continued oppression of our people during what is now proven to be the Windrush scandal!

My dislike of the current relations​​hip with Britain has nothing to do with the present queen who has been quite unobtrusive and benign. However, she will not live forever and the thought of a foreigner with Charles' reputation and character being the head of state of my country, is even more intolerable.

Anyway, regardless of who it is that sits on the racist British throne, 59 years is just too long for us to claim to be independent while that situation prevails. 

https://youtu.be/oCqHflj4SNE

Leadership Crisis

Jamaica has a serious leadership crisis which does not bode well for the future of this beleaguered country at all.

Things  have been made worse by the recent election of Andrew Holness, a Seaga protegee and apparently a follower of Machiavelli, to the leadership of the alternative government, the JLP.  For many people had hoped he being a young man who claimed to be transnational, would have brought some semblance of decently and integrity to the political process as the present government has long proven to be not only incompetent and corrupt but lacking in leadership. For while our first female Prime Minister Portia Simpson is a novelty, that is mainly what she is and in fact is an embarrassment to female leaders throughout the world, who until now, have been far better at governing and leading than their male counterparts.

So that was why all eyes and hope were on the young man, the representative of the new generation. Holness has however has proven to be far too vindictive, petty and totally dishonest to allow us to hold out any hope for this country, for since he won the election, his only mission seems to have been to go after not only those who openly came out in support of his opponent Audley Shaw but also to even punish those who remained silent, leaning neither towards him or Shaw!

Where he struck the nail in his coffin however was by his outright act of dishonesty towards his own colleagues and  party supporters,  showing what he has in store for all  detractors, independent thinkers and persons aligned to the PNP. 

When Holness was first selected JLP leader by the disgraced Bruce Golding in 2011, as per normal, he selected a group of senators to sit in the Upper House. What Jamaica did not know however is that these appointees had been required to demean themselves in exchange for the vaunted job, by giving Holness undated and open letters of resignations.

While it has been revealed that  the unsigned  letters did not state how or when they could be used. Holness had apparently given the senators verbal assurances that they would only be used if any of them opposed the party's stance on having the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) replacing the British Privy Council as Jamaica's Finial Court of Appeal. 

However when two senators Auther Williams and Dr. Chris Tufton refused to obey his unreasonable request for all senators to resign after he was elected Leader, he simply ignored his promise to the two to only use the letters for a specific purpose, dated them and sent them to the governor general!

If that is not a total breach of trust, I certainty do not know what is, but if Jamaicans do not understand by that act, he is totally without scruples, then we are as blind as lambs to the slaughter.

Of course the crisis of leadership in this country has not passed unnoticed by all around us, for, within days, Barbadian Minister of Industry and International Business Domville Innis,  in castigating the Gleaner for an editorial criticising his government, told them to mind their own business and instead pay attention to the  "...rot going on in Jamaica."

Jamaica is indeed the sick man of the Caribbean.