BUSINESSMAN Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart, chairman of the Jamaica Observer has implored local politicians to cease bad-mouthing businessmen and instead recognise their importance to the development of the country.

Stewart strongly argued that the only way to effectively reduce crime and poverty was through the “encouragement and development of businesses”.

“The only way you are going to get on top of crime, the only way you are going to get rid of poverty is through the encouragement and development of businesses,” said an impassioned Stewart.

The head of the ATL group and Sandals Resorts was speaking Thursday night at the inauguration of the Jamaica Observer Institute of Business Leaders that has Governor-General Sir Kenneth Hall as its patron.

The Institute was co-founded by Stewart and Moses Jackson, former Jamaica Observer business editor and will include all present and future nominees of the 12-year-old Jamaica Observer Business awards presented annually. Chairman is businessman and 2005 winner, Ryland Campbell.

“If you want the country to prosper, you make sure the businesses are prosperous,” Stewart told the gathering which included Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller.

Stewart argued that it was from these businesses that government received its taxes – “whether through the business activities or from the people they employ”.

Businesses in Jamaica had instead gone through the most torturous periods over the years, Stewart remarked.

He said that the Business Leader Awards was formed out of a need to give businesses a common voice in the late 1990s, during the meltdown of the island’s financial sector, marked by vilification by politicians.

“It was designed to change the conversation about businessmen who were being tainted by politicians of being greedy and incompetent,” said Stewart, adding that there was no public discourse about the risk that businessmen took to build their companies and employ people.

He added that business people had been demonised and bad-mouthed by politicians but instead Jamaicans needed to pool resources together and get into action.

“Why not all of us make a point of getting together and good-mouth each other?” Stewart said to sustained applause.