Dear Editor,

Whenever I hear our politicians use the phrase 'the Jamaican people', my heart cringes, as the terminology is bereft of identity and innate possibility.

Over the past four decades, the Jamaican people have been physically and pschologically abused, tricked, exploited, grossed out, 'Nicodemusised' with new taxes and raped by our elected officials.

* They raped the bauxite levy

* They raped and destroyed the entrepreneurial spirit and indigenous financial sector

* They permitted FINSAC to become a crime against humanity and tricked the people with their government-appointed commissioners

* They raped and killed Air Jamaica

* They raped NHT and realising that she has not yet yielded, is now attacking her again and again

* They raped and continue to abuse the PAYE worker

* They raped and continue to rape pensioners and holders of government bonds

* They have raped and destroyed the majority of the middle class in order to create a 'we love the poor' society.

Our politicians are euthanasiatic and parasitic. Just listen to the recent call for us to tighten our belts ... given without a hint of their own participation. They suffer from delusions of grandeur, and above all else, a new breed of neurotic locust, whose actions are described by the prophet Joel (1:4):

'What the cutting locust left,

the swarming locust has eaten.

What the swarming locust left,

the hopping locust has eaten.

What the hopping locust left,

the destroying locust has eated.'

Where is the justice that the Jamaican people seek when the swarming locust have not been held to account?

Where is the voice of civil society and persons of faith who choose,

"to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?" (Isa 58:6).

We have now witnessed that the claims by our politicians, whether as government or in opposition, to be able to satisy citizen's need, aspirations and expectations, are delusional and act as the foundation for mental slavery.

May the minority of Jamaicans to whom the season of lent has great spiritual significance, respond to the mission of their baptismal covenant to be a light in the economic darkness and to stand up for justice in a nation where the middle class has become a bruised reed and the dimly-lit wick of the poor is being diminished each day as the Jamaican people become denaturalised.

Dudley C McLean

Mandeville, Manchester