Dear Reader,

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul”? – Mark 8:36.

Jamaica’s problem is not the poor masses or the absence of natural talents and resources. Jamaica’s problem is the convenient love affair between the business and intellectual “philanderers” and those greedy, power-obsessed politicians who would stop at nothing to hold on to government, and by extension, to the gravy.

Those money-driven vultures inside and outside of Jamaica, who couldn’t care less which one of the two “gangs” occupy Jamaica House so long as their interests are maintained, are as central to the Finsac storyline as their immoral political servants whose private lines and home numbers are mutual conveniences.

I congratulate Dr Karl Blythe for having the courage to separate himself from the crowd to say it like it is – in essence to “speak the truth and shame the devil”. A seasoned politician like Dr Blythe must have counted the cost for his comments beforehand, and would have known that he would come under intense attack from the “gang”. I want to reassure Dr Blythe that they may kick him out of the NEC, but he has earned a much better place – that is in God’s book of truth speakers, and there are many Jamaicans like myself who want to express our gratitude.

The Finsac story is not just a financial manuscript. The Finsac story is an immoral treatise of shattered lives and shattered dreams of our Jamaican brothers and sisters. It is a story of immense human tragedy, and there is nothing that Omar Davies or PJ Patterson can say to whitewash that fact. Their inability to identify and empathise with perhaps the single most concentrated period of economic devastation since slavery is a clear indication that they have lost their souls. Finsac is indefensible, and it is better for those responsible to confess their sins and to show some remorse by seeking to help put a halt to the continued confiscation of the assets of the victims.

And the human suffering continues unabated. One of the finsac’d entrepreneurs who also received physical injuries during the time of his material demise now lives in a one-room shack in virtually uninhabitable squatter land. A self-taught, self-made small businessman with big dreams has ended up a pauper. I was told that only a few weeks ago, returning home a little later than usual, he succumbed to the limitations of his physical abilities and fell into the gully near his place of abode. Thank God he’s alive, but while the physical scars will heal, the deep, emotional wounds are not easily mended by medication.

And there is the businessman who returned home having been professionally trained both in the UK and Canada with the kind of expertise and patriotism that would make any country proud. His only sin was that his was the contracting company for one of Omar Davies’ described “bad debtors”. When he couldn’t collect from his client he too was forced to turn to the bank. By the time the Finsac nightmare was over, his loan of $10.9 million grew to $85 million, even after paying back $70 million and liquidating all his assets, movable and unmovable. He and his wife lost everything and are now trying to rebuild a new life at a time when they should be looking to retire comfortably. The spouse, a talented businesswoman, tells me that in addition to the injustice of the past, she is currently “blacklisted”, and is unable to get any capital to restart her once successful enterprise.

But the collusion, complicity and cover-up cannot be placed solely at the feet of politicians and their private sector cohorts. Jamaica’s civil society (albeit weak and disjointed) and the church must also take responsibility for not speaking loudly enough about the incompetence and the corruption that continues to destroy the economic and social fabric of the country. Sadly, until the church understands its role as the “conscience” of the state and not its servant, I suspect that the silence from one of the most powerful institutions in Jamaica will continue to be deafening. My friend likes to remind me that God is a “verb”, not a “noun”.

If the incompetent bankers and other institutional managers are responsible for the Finsac holocaust as Omar Davies insists, then his administration should own up to its own incompetence at the time in not properly monitoring and regulating the relevant institutions. The question as to bias – that is, who got bailed out and who didn’t, and for how much, is another issue still largely unanswered.

As far as I am concerned, the same principles apply to the Cash Plus and Olint sagas. Not only did the then government fail to step in early to monitor and regulate the “schemes”, but high-ranking government officials, it is rumoured, were themselves investors. As my friend would say, it is a classic case of “putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank”. When the client and the regulator are one and the same, who is supposed to prosecute whom?

So the dishonesty and the hypocrisy of the public and private Finsac “philanderers” continues, while the children and grandchildren of those finsac’d, along with the families of the thousands affected by job losses, suffer the bitter legacy. It is interesting that those who are investing the most in defending the material destitution of so many Jamaicans appear to be amongst some of the most materially comfortable people in the society. What an irony!

With love,

bab2609@yahoo.com