PEOPLE like me who sit in front of a laptop and heap criticisms on the political system and the predators within it have often been told by politicians to “put up or shut up”.

In other words, we must get up off our backsides, attach ourselves to either the PNP or the JLP and, in fulfilment of the noble urge to ‘serve’, get ourselves involved in representational politics.

For a brief time in the 1990s I toyed with the idea, but the spark in me died as quickly as it had appeared in some perverse part of my mind. Wanting better for one’s fellow man will ignite a small fire inside, but when one is faced with the harsh reality of funding and the ownership that it demands — whether the money comes from clean, private sector business surpluses or dirty drugs — the turnoff comes.

When the terrible reality of guns and the political gunmen were factored in, an additional turnoff was presented to me. Lastly, when I factored in the ‘danger’ of telling the people the truth rather than what they wanted to hear, my party political aspirations met stillbirth.

For this reason I must congratulate my friend Betty Ann Blaine, head of the New Nation Coalition (NNC), the newest political party on the block. I have co-hosted with Betty Ann twice when she had her mid-morning talk show on Nationwide and I thoroughly enjoyed the interaction, especially the flattery from key Nationwide staff who called me a ‘natural’ on radio, whatever that means.

Blaine is a deeply religious person and she left it in no doubt that she would be taking her Christian principles with her on her political trip. Indeed, in her rude introduction to the grime of Jamaican politics, she scored 196 votes, insignificant by any standards in the by-election in South West St Catherine.

Her symbol in that election and, I take it, for as long as the NNC lasts, is the heart for love, if not the pumping of new life and political liberation for the constituents. In that election she lost horribly to Everald Warmington, a man who, for reasons best known to the prime minister and other senior members of the JLP, is hardly ever likely to be a full Cabinet minister but does supply that added political expedient of ‘MP’, especially due to the JLP’s slim majority in the House.

If, by some miracle, the old, decaying, smelly politics as presently practised was to sputter and die and allow us to introduce a new dawn into the lives of our people, it would be my sincere wish that as I gaze on reflectively at its last urge to remain more than a spark, I would see Mr Warmington in there struggling to light a flame but nevertheless impelled by a force superior to him, leading the last ember of the decayed past into nothingness.

In 2005, not even the most astute political prognosticator could have told the world and American Wasps that the US would elect a black president in 2008. Adopting that logic, there is hope for Betty Ann Blaine and the NNC.

As she must be given credit for wading too early into the muck of representational politics, Jamaican style, so too must she be criticised for engaging a gear before all cylinders are firing, and her comments in the wake of Warmington’s win.

The fact is, if Blaine should, by some miracle, find herself elected as an independent, and if the reality of proportional representation and separation of powers, both held as sacred tenets of Bruce Golding in his ‘new and different’ days in the NDM (1995 to 2002) should occur, her judgement in important matters would always come to the fore.

A politician who is truly new and different would have said to the people of South West St Catherine, ‘I thank you for the 196 votes but seriously, what have these votes given me? Can these 196 votes empower me to assist you in educating your children, upgrading your skills and securing for you an adequate income? People, I am sorry to tell you this, but for all that these votes have done for me and you, they would have been better off given to the JLP’.

Instead, Betty Ann likened them to “a stand for decency, dignity and an end to tribal, corrupt politics”, standard political response where the person making the quote is constrained from saying what really must be said.

One of the best bits of analysis of Betty Ann’s political foray came from the Caribbean Online Forum. Said its chairperson, Trevor Campbell, “Here is an excerpt from Betty Ann Blaine’s report, where she shares this experience: “As I faced off with the vote sellers, my former days as a lecturer in African history proved useful. This is not slavery and you are not slaves to be bought and sold,” I reminded them. What is your value? What could I possibly pay for you? Some of them understood, but I knew in their eyes that it was all about survival, and it broke my heart.”

“Some time ago, Ms Betty Ann Blaine — like many of her fellow petit-bourgeois moralisers and preachers — convinced herself that the advocacy of self-righteous moralism is an adequate substitute for the systematic study of the political economy of capitalism, in the struggle for social change. What she seems to have difficulties grasping is the fact that ‘poor people’ are quite aware of their material poverty.

“What they really need is an understanding of why they are poor, relative to other classes in the society, and how to go about the task of transforming/changing the circumstances/the conditions that they find themselves in. Blaine and her friends in the New Nation Coalition are intent on telling the poor something they already know!

The poorer sections of the working class (particularly the unemployed) are very aware that they are not chattel slaves; they do not need Betty Ann or a course in African History to bring them to that level of awareness. Their main problem is that they are not able to sell their labour-power, which, of course, would then make them ‘wage-slaves’ (like the rest of the working class).

“The real challenge for Ms Blaine, and her colleagues, is coming to grips with the reality that they know very little, if anything, about how modern capitalist industries are organised, and that they are equally clueless about the process of organising themselves in the way that is required to undertake a systematic study of the global capitalist economy.

It is only on this basis that a group of individuals can develop a collective understanding of the complex economic, social and political processes that are unfolding in the modern world and would then be in a better position to provide some type of coherent leadership to the various social classes in the society.”

In plain language, Trevor Campbell seems to be saying that Blaine and her political colleagues and others of that sort are into wishing, hoping, Bible-thumping and selling the poor a menu of words that do little to bring about real change in their material conditions. An earthly heaven is instead sold to the people, many of whom have probably said behind Betty Ann’s back, ‘Me waan something, she can gimme it but she waan tell mi whey we done know bout meself. Waste a time.’

Again, if by some miracle Betty Ann and her team were able to convince a transnational entity to relocate to Jamaica, situate its plant/factory in South West St Catherine and employ 5,000 of her potential constituents, pay then liveable wages and still do well on the bottom line, she would be a hero. That is hardly likely to happen, so when the people ask her for a ‘let-off’ which is how the politics had bred itself into the shape that it now has, especially in its route among our poorest, she is left nonplussed and seemingly on the verge of presenting them with a plate of the Bible and a cup filled with hymn books.

At this time I accept it that I do not have many of the answers to the mechanics of fixing the problems of this country. We know that we need a more educated population, a more civil people, tolerable crime statistics, massive foreign investments, etc. The problem is, how do we go from where we are, which is almost at the extreme opposite end of our objectives, to meeting those desired goals?

As a newspaper columnist I do not have the answers, but based on Betty Ann’s own words, neither does she. I am hoping that Betty Ann does not see just the very act of putting her hat in the ring as a noble objective on its own. If she does, then it is likely that she will be always satisfied with 196 votes.

One person who gave feedback to the column stated quite correctly, ‘Understanding the problem is a necessary first step, but it’s not enough. The country needs politicians with solutions — we don’t need politicians with nothing more to offer than sympathy. Sympathy puts nothing on the table. It is precisely what got us ‘democratic socialism’, the mother of all economic train wrecks. We can’t afford more.’

We saw the NDM in 1995 when its fire lit a flame in most of us. But it only threatened to be more than what we had then. Is the NNC here to try that trip on us again? While the poor need hope to keep their ambitions alive, it is bread that actually keeps them breathing. But Betty Ann has love.

The evils of the 1990s Meltdown and Finsac

WITH the current enquiry to determine what brought on the crash, how those involved were treated and the way forward, all are hoping that more than mere words will emerge from the final report into the Finsac matters.

An entire burgeoning black business class was cast aside, lives were destroyed and of those who looked on, a significant percentage became plainly scared to invest in business in Jamaica. Granted, the savers in these institutions deemed ‘failed’ had their deposits guaranteed by the formation of Finsac.

What has irked many is the monetary policy of the 1990s which saw usurious increases in interest rates, with borrowers entering contracts at 20 per cent and having to face 80 per cent-plus interest rates. Who could survive on that?

One person e-mailed me the following, ‘Your numerous articles on the issue of Finsac and the shabby manner in which indigenous entrepreneurs Don Crawford and Paul Chen-Young, et al were shabbily and brutally treated by the previous administration deserves kudos. It is good that you have and continue to raise the consciousness of your readers about the role of Justice Henderson Downer refusing Don Crawford’s application for leave to take his case to the Privy Council.

‘While you spent a lot of time enlightening readers about the presence of Justice Henderson Downer I fail to see how you have not enlightened us about the role of at least one other local judge, who rendered a decision against Crawford. That judge, Mr XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX, cannot work as a lawyer/counsel at law or a judge or, for that matter, even give legal advice in at least one other jurisdiction. Are you in the loop about his suspension/barring?? Where does XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX get the moral authority to render such a negative decision against Don Crawford when he is not in good standing in a certain state in the US? Only in Jamaica, Mark.

‘Jamaica has gone straight to hell in a basket, Mark.

‘Don Crawford more than anyone else was and is still battered brutally and has been treated as if he committed treason or sedition. My understanding is that when his CNB Group was in operation, it employed well in excess of 10,000 Jamaicans. The reduction of CNB to rubble did not only throw those 10,000 plus on the unemployment line, it threw the lives of the dependents of those 10,000 plus in turmoil. Who were those dependents? They were students, nephews, nieces, cousins, mothers, fathers, businesses, et al that were all thrown into economic turmoil.

‘Am sure that it was Dr Omar Davies’s voodoo economic policies and not Don Crawford and the other indigenous entrepreneurs who failed. That so-called world finance minister was a grand failure. That man is still ambitious about sitting in that chair once again. Oh Mark, pray that that does not come upon us again. God help us if it does.

‘It is so sad to see those pacesetters now living in selfimposed exile in the USA, the land of the free and the brave, rather than residing in Jamaica, the land of their birth.

‘After close to four years in office it remains a serious indictment on the part of the Bruce Golding administration to do all it could have done to get all the parties at the conference table to settle the sour state that resulted in the exiling of those indigenous bankers and businessmen who in the past contributed so much to the economic upliftment of our country. Sadly, the Golding administration, while it has made some economic strides, has failed miserably in creating a friendly investment environment.’

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