No Minister Farrakhan

I have always been mesmerized by Minister Louis Farrakhan who I consider one of the greatest orators./ debaters of our time, although I could never endorse his religion which treats women as second class citizens, but that is another matter.

Last weekend at the million man march, Minister  Farrakhan  did not disappoint despite  having reached  the grand old age of 81.

For  man of his depth however, I was disappointed how he allowed himself to be influenced by cheap local rhetoric regrading our maintaining the status quo as regards  the queen of England.

While I support the removal of the British queen and her expensive representative in Jamaica, we need to go much  further to make governance more relevant to our needs, now that we are supposedly independent.

 For to get rid of the queen while holding for dear life to the remnants of colonialism such as the Army, the British devised local government system, Caricom ( the Federation of the former British colonies by the back door ) and the allowing of members of parliament from the commonwealth while banning those who American citizens, can help this country, is in no way progressive or independent.

Take the Local government system as bequeathed by our former colonial masters when it took days to travel from one parish to the next and land phones and other means of communication were in the dark ages, is ridiculous. And who does it benefit? In my book, only the JLP and PNP who get the benefit of having their grass root campaigners financed by taxpayers to the tune of some $4 billion per year. 

Jamaica with its small population, certainly does not need 15 governments and 15 time wasting bureaucracies (14 Local government and one central government) thus using all our resources to pay politicians, consultants and bureaucrats, leaving no or very little resources to build communities. (Incidentally,  the parishes were demarcated in a manner thought best to facilitate the Anglican parishes in the colonies, it had nothing to do with the  the convenience or efficiency of serving the interests the people, as the Anglican church was the official church of the colonizers and the only thing more powerful than that church  then was the monarch).

We should have moved long ago to the concept of three County councils as proposed decades ago after intensitive study, plus local government agencies for the two cities. How much more practical would 6 governments be for a population of 2.7 million as opposed to the 15 we now have?

Then take the army. The British needed a full fledged army to protect their empire in the Caribbean  but where is our empire? (They successfully samfied some colonial minded politicians into accepting the concept of federation to keep the colonies together and we are still holding on to it for dear life via the body called CARICOM) !

We need to restructure the army to serve the interests of the Jamaican people, not to preserve an empire. So what we need is a good coast guard to protect our shores, an efficient engineering corp and an air wing and redirect the billions we are wasting on the infantry which will not even use a couple paint brushes and hammers to fix up the historical site at Newcastle that they occupy.

 Instead the members of the infantry should be invited to join the police force so they can be trained to serve and protect the people of  this nation, not treat us as enemies to be to be cut down, which is what soldiers taught to do.

Then there is his nonsense where members of the commonwealth  including Pakistani Muslims can serve in our parliament and even become prime ministers after residing here for a year while Jamaican who migrate to the US and have gained experience and valuable education are deterred, is absolute madness.

Yes Minister Farrakhan, by all means lets get rid to the Queen of England, her heirs and successors and all she represents, but we need far more than mere superficial tinkering if we are interested in becoming really independent and determined to build this great country into a place where we can live as a proud people.

And by the way, if we are going to remove all vestiges of colonialism, we need to do away with  the "cricket holidays" that bureaucrats still get to go watch that ever so colonial game, with its tea time breaks and all!.

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SLOW PACE OF CHANGE

One of the most wasteful and stupid practices of successive Jamaican governments is to establish a new agency to deal with every new problem.

So taxpayers are forever saddled with several agencies overlapping each other and despite the fact that the country is now scraping the proverbial barrel to try and ward off insolvency, the logic of amalgamating agencies continues to evade us.

So it is with this in mind that I overwhelmingly welcome the move to finally amalgamate the JCF and ISCF (blue stripe and red stripe police) 20 years after it was recommended by the Wolfe Task force on crime! Is this a sign that we are finally coming to our senses?

I doubt it very much, for no where have I heard that anyone wants to restructure that expensive relic of colonialism, the army, to serve the best interests of the Jamaican people, so I suppose that we will continue to waste billions on  that deadly institution  for centuries to come, although we have no empire to protect. (Could they protect us from an invasion from Cayman anyway? I doubt it!)

What purpose does a fully fledged army serve? Sure we need a coast guard, an air wing and an engineering corp but shouldn't the thousands who make up the infantry be offered the opportunity to be retrained to serve and protect the people of Jamaica via the police force? Right now, these men have very little to do except act as bat men  for the  officer corp and occasionally, although they are not trained to do police work, they are sent in to terrorize people in the inner-cities.

 It is  pathetic to see these healthy young men being trained at Newcastle and no one would even think of giving them some paint and lumber to fix up their quarters there which is slowly but surely crumbling.  Then after they are trained, they are wasted at camp. Such blatant under-utilization of human capital.

While we waste money and peoples lives on a redundant army, Costa Rica, situated in the midst of turmoil in Centrral America, abolished theirs in 1947 and diverted the resources to education. No wonder their per capita income is almost twice ours and the last time I visited there about two years ago, a friend was able to boast that they do not do manual labour but import Nicaraguans to do all their "dirty work."

Oh how thousands of our Jamaicans would love to  get an opportunity to go there and do their "dirty work" while our governments continue to operate as a "one eye men in blind man country."

Why An Army?

I am one of those who cannot be convinced that Jamaica really needs a fully fledged army. For what are the external foes have they protected us from over the years? 

 Yes I can see the rationale behind a coast guard, an Air Wing and an Engineering Corp since these are all important to national development.

But an a large infantry? For what? To be bus boys and valets for the officers? 

 With our penchant for killing each other, what Jamaica needs is a well trained and equipped security force to deal with internal threats, not a group that we call an army which if we ever had an external invasion could probably not keep the smallest invading army at bay for a day. 

But what am I griping about since once our governments decide to waste our money on unnecessary expenditure, not matter the number of billions involved, we have to just shut up and find the money to foot the bill. 

The issue of the army and its usefullness came rushing back into my conciousness as I read the Gleaner headline "Soldiers to get marching orders". According to the story, the army's headquarters is to be relocated to Caymanas and while I have no quarrel with that, what I definitely have a quarrel with is what is happening to beautiful Newcastle on the salubrious hills of St. Andrew. 

Has anyone in authority whether in the army of the govenment been up there recently? What is happening is a national disgrace for the once well kept, pristine training centre has become a virtual dungle and an eyesore. 

Are you really telling that we have a standing army with large engineering corp made up of masons, carpenters, painters, electricians, engineers, plumbers etc. yet they have allowed Newcastle to become such a dump?

While I have heard that very little training takes place there now as that function is to be fully relocated to Moneague, I have seen no such announcement. Anyway, that could never be an excuse for them to have allowed the facility to deteriorate to the condition it has. 

This is a place where they once had cottages that were rented to persons wanting to recharge their batteries in the beautiful hills but not even rats would want to stay there now.

 Further there was a time when the soldiers used to maintain the road leading to the camp and keep it bushed. Not even that is being done anymore. 

 It is going to take more than a move to Caymans to convince many Jamaicans that we do indeed a need a full standing army or that the country gets anything close to value for money for having this largely ceremonial millstone around our necks.