Ronald Thwaites | Bruce Golding gets it

Bruce Golding is brave enough and sufficiently disentangled from the love bush of tribalism to say so. Jamaica begins its 65th year of formal independence more constrained by geopolitics than ever before.

News is that the Central Intelligence Agency is overtly planning the Cuban putsch into which, by proximity and ‘friendship,’ we will be engaged, like it or not. All the while, ordinary Jamaicans continue to suffer from the yanking of the Cuban doctors.

Bruce, yu too soft! Not only is that not ‘friendship’. That’s enemy action: cruelty dressed up as diplomacy while otherwise decent ministers wearing OJs twist up their mouths and their consciences at Cabinet press briefings and invite us to lie back and enjoy the rape of sovereignty since it’s inevitable.

THE ‘AFTER-PARTY’

Now that the circus of Emancipendence celebrations have passed and rent and back-to-school money have been used to pay for hairstyle and liquor, how much better are we economically or spiritually? Real energy comes from confronting serious problems purposefully. Amid all the fizz of the last two weeks, only Bruce among our leaders talks it like it is, no need to be angry, just truthful. We are living between states of denial and complacent mendicancy. We are about to turn our fears into our fate.

Were we disposed to stop burning each other’s bridges at the mature age of 64, there are so many things we can do to help ourselves out of the vice grip of chronic dependency. Can we not keep our dignity, continue our loyalty to our Cuban, Chinese and Haitian friends, double down on local production, get serious about effective education, while being respectfully distinct from the extremes of American foreign policy? The more we show we have our own backbone, the more respected an ally, and less a subservient client, we stand to be treated.

If you don’t think such effort is worthy and possible, change Jamaica’s Independence date to July 4.

LEECHING OURSELVES

Retail trade is in trouble now that we can directly import even toilet paper and cup soup. Outsiders take liberty with us when they observe us lying to ourselves about the quality of our education, social services and productive capacity. What is our political culture doing to redress the embarrassment of the average Chinese worker being three times more productive than one of us? How many of us are studying their work ethic?

Part of the reason we get pushed around, as Bruce described, is that we come across as disunited, self-obsessed and licky-licky. Pretty dancing and profiling can’t overcome those self-imposed deficits.

WE ARE NOT SERIOUS

Why waste billions this month on textbooks which cannot, will not, be read? Our imports cost almost five times more than our merchandise exports are worth. There is probably a 60% leakage of the tourism dollar. We are spending upwards of $15 billion of the education budget to pay for teachers to be out of the classroom. We are wasting an even larger sum keeping nearly 200 underpopulated, ineffective schools going because the existing education code prevents the rationalisation of teacher placement.

We settle wage increases with the public servants without any commitment to greater productivity and sterilise development capital because government revenues are short.

Do you think Rubio could talk to Singapore the way he styles us?

SELF-RESPECT

The more we are seen as being honest, just and efficient in dealing with our own affairs, the better we will be able to resist those who disrespect our independence.

Bruce’s analysis is a nationalist one. Pitch the tent at Vale Royal since the roof still leaks. Use his narrative of Jamaica’s geopolitical ‘prekke’ to fashion a five-year plan for radical national upliftment; make it impervious to partisan sabotage, with a foreign policy, new yet old, where our Cariforum, Canada-led middle-power bloc and re-forged African connections reinforce our identity as friends to China, of course the US and whoever else it suits us: vassal to no empire; no military might but undoubted moral power.

If the people on the Titanic were not prancing and cavorting in their false hubris that their ship was unsinkable, they could have avoided the iceberg.

FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION

You know my starting point. A basic step towards the dignity which undergirds every aspect of independence and prosperity is the fashioning of good character underlying the skills of literacy and numeracy.

That conviction is what has propelled some of us to move from the heights of school administration and the apex of education policy to dedicate ourselves to the poorest classrooms to develop strategies to make these skills universal.

Going into a third year of experimentation, the methodology is showing that it can work. That is, if flexibility in school management and curriculum are allowed.

The same concept is proving itself in several states of the United States as well. With united political will to reform the education code, pay teachers properly and expect accountability from them, in under 10 years, Jamaica could have a firm and irreversible foundation for the STEAM culture we want but don’t know how to get.

We could deliberately model a more productive work ethic and achieve measurable growth using indices of holistic human development rather than the sterile economistic matrices which elude us anyway.

As we begin our 65th year of nominal freedom, can we set our minds to use our resources and our political system to make us stronger and more loving instead of becoming the scared, self-doubting, easily disrespected pawns of any big power? We need to move beyond merely agreeing that Bruce is describing our reality while feeling there is really nothing that we can do to change our fate.

Anything less will be mental slavery.

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.