Yesterday the CEO of the Jamaica Observer, Edward (Ed) Khoury addressed the Rotary Club of Kingston at a luncheon held at the Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston. He called for all sectors of society to cooperate in making Jamaica a better country for all its citizens. Below is the full text of that address.

I would like to take the opportunity to share with you frankly some issues that I think are of concern to many Jamaicans today.

Next year we will be celebrating our fiftieth anniversary as an Independent State. An objective assessment of the period since Independence shows both successes and failures.

We have increased access to education at all levels, improved the delivery of health care to the point where the life expectancy of a Jamaican is now 71 years, just two less than that of an American.

Sustained investment in our physical infrastructure is reflected in our air and sea ports and super highways. In many aspects we have travelled the road of modernity and development.

It is to our credit that we are numbered among the few countries who gained Independence after World War II, who have maintained democratic institutions and still enjoy a free press, the issue of defamation reform notwithstanding.

However, we cannot deny that with each passing day, an increasing number of Jamaicans are of the view that we have not made a success of Independence.

For them, the devaluation of the Jamaican dollar, the climbing national debt, the homicide rate, the bottlenecks and red tape which impede the productive sector, and the violence with which we relate to each other have all contributed to a Jamaica that we find increasingly difficult to live and work in.

At Independence the majority of our children who entered high school left with some certification. Today the majority leave without certification in even one subject.

At Independence we had one university and most of our university graduates were certain of employment in Jamaica. Today, fifty years on, we have certainly made progress in one direction. We now have four universities, and our tertiary enrolment rate has increased from one per cent to fifteen per cent.

However, after all this investment, a significant majority of our graduates are abroad, unable to find opportunities for their economic and social advancement in the land of their birth.

Today as we prepare to celebrate this major milestone in the life of the nation, it is my firm belief that we would have done much better had we been able to arrive at a national consensus on matters of national importance.

I believe we have missed the opportunity of creating a culture of cooperation to facilitate that consensus that we so badly need. It is a challenge that will not be easily overcome but one which requires constant work in order to lay the basis to advance national development.

What are these matters of national importance? What are our priorities as a nation? I am sure that if we should ask each of our sixty parliamentarians to write down what they consider Jamaica’s ten most urgent priorities, along with solutions, I doubt that any two would be in agreement.

Another worrying problem is that the Jamaican people seem to be losing confidence in national leadership at all levels.

The problem is even more compounded by the fact that even as the people lose faith in political leadership, many of us in corporate Jamaica and, indeed, most of civil society have withdrawn to the sidelines. We seem to no longer have any appetite for the national project.

Many of us are retreating with no other thought than to preserve our slice of a shrinking national cake. The few of us who remain in the public gaze seem to be as divided as the politicians on a strategy for taking the country forward. In many of our pronouncements we mirror the same divisiveness that we condemn within our political leadership.

We need to be conscious of the fact that the vacuum we created has been substantially filled by a criminal elite with links to the international drug trade and to corrupt individuals in both the political class and the private sector.

How can we address the situation? And what are the steps we can take towards consensus building at all levels? My view is that we must first establish our national priorities after the necessary dialogue between government and civil society. Then we must have a sign-off from both political parties and the private sector.

To my mind three of these priorities should be:

1. A nationally coordinated programme to manage crime more effectively

2. A system of education and training which produces a more disciplined and productive labour force, together with a more socially cohesive citizenry; and

3. A facilitating environment for entrepreneurship and business.

A recent international survey shows Jamaica at number 81 for business facilitation, and moving in the wrong direction. This is one area in which the private sector shares some responsibility with the government.

As far as I am aware, it has not been for want of trying on the part of the private sector to agitate for and recommend action to change the business climate and reduce the bureaucratic red tape that has put a damper Jamaica’s potential as a place to do business. The truth be told, under successive governments, trying to reduce the bureaucracy has been an exercise in bureaucracy itself. Our failing has been in easing back on the pressure that must be maintained to succeed.

If we are to create this business-friendly environment, on which our survival as a nation depends, we have to find ways to get past the talk and act on the substantial body of recommendations that now exists.

National priorities mean nothing if they do not have priority claim on national resources – both financial and human. This means there must be a clear link between the expenditure of revenues and loans and the implementation of our priorities. At present, it is mind boggling trying to understand how we structure our priorities, that is, what we find resources for, in contrast to what we tell the nation that we have to do without.

We do not have much time. In another two months our Government will be presenting another annual budget, and in 2012 general elections will be due. We have yet to rationalize annual budgets with five-year terms of office.

If we begin now, we can work towards an election campaign in which competing parties present 5-year development plans for national debate rather than continuing with the predictable rhetoric, crossfire, platitudes and back-patting even as the social and economic indicators point in a different direction.

We all have a stake in making a quantum change in the way that the nation’s business is conducted. Not one of us can protect ourselves against the epidemics raging around us in the form of chronic unemployment, crime and anti-social behaviour, low cultural levels and endemic corruption.

We in the private sector know only too well that our businesses are not sustainable in this environment. Let us press this dialogue with our political counterparts and establish timelines for the outcomes that we seek.

Instinctively, Jamaicans know that until the political parties and the private sector arrive at a consensus and develop a joint plan of action to tackle our most pressing challenges, Jamaica will pass into the category of ‘failed states’ long before we celebrate another fifty years.

So let us plan to make the 50th anniversary of Jamaica a launching pad to do better as a nation. Let us take a leaf out of the excellence that Jamaica has demonstrated in so many fields of endeavour in the world in music, sport, culture, and leadership in diverse specialities.

As we approach our 50th year of Independence, let us request, no, let us demand of our leaders a demonstration of the kind of maturity that puts Jamaica first and build new friendships and cooperation across social barriers.

Let’s insist that our leaders present us with concrete plans and programmes and a vision of, not only arising from this recession, but achieving the full potential of which Jamaica is more than capable.

In parting, I leave you with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr:

“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”