Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is a fine person and a diplomat – God bless her! Her comment on our “impressive and commendable” stance is classic hyperbole. The World Bank just released its decadal analysis which exposes our intergenerational failure; the perpetrators are still alive, so it really hurts those who understand nuanced English! The drones are gleeful at her comment; I am embarrassed! My granny says when you catch a powerful man with his pants down, look away and praise the quality of the cloth. God bless Bruce! I think Mrs Clinton knew my granny. We must get off our derrieres and build this flippin’ country. The national psychiatrist says most of us are “touched”, so this may account for our fear of prosperity and sufferer mentality. We are cursed by freeness; even national days are anti-climactic freeness! Self-government landed at No 1 Pier in 1944 – freeness! A century before, Queen Victoria gave us emancipation – freeness! they failed to seduce us into Federation – Sir Alexander (Busta) upset his educated cousin (no, Sir) – so Queen Elizabeth gave us Independence – freeness! Busta saved us – an unintended consequence as he was just playing politics with poor people – as using modern finance models we now know federation could not work for us. What do all these freebies do to our collective minds? Norman Washington Manley, father of political independence, tasked us to achieve economic independence, but our leaders have all failed and Bruce is well on course to join those he served in his many past ministerial roles!

Britain encouraged Federation of its West and East Indian colonies – including Singapore, yet they balked at the EU, joined long after it started and up to now have not joined the Euro. Why did they want us to federate when they would not join the EU? We were a liability! Later our leaders bought into Independence but never did the due diligence. Norman Manley imbibed Karl Marx’s nascent ideas, Fabian socialism and anti-imperialism in the UK; federation failed and he articulated Independence. Note two points. One: our independence was a fall-back position after union failed. Two: of the JLP and PNP, one espoused the international workers rights movement and the other was an opportunistic reaction to events. Norman was a thinker who birthed independence but Alexander Bustamante (né Clark), the less accomplished winner of the election, became our first PM. One made the car, the other drove it! Busta’s tenure did not get us economic independence, but Lee Kuan Yew’s did for Singapore within 25 years. Do you know which side Busta took in the Spanish American fascist wars as he got his name and experience in those parts? A man’s birth or death tell us naught of his formative years or core beliefs. My journey from aspirational urban youth, manual worker, churchified federalist, campus socialist to left-of-centre futurist, now boring sceptic, is transparent! What was Busta’s journey? All this leads to one question ,”Do our people now think economic independence will be a gift like emancipation or the other gifted events we celebrate?” Maybe! What do we do now?

Economic independence is 49 years in the pot – not cooked yet! We failed! Not my verdict, read the recent World Bank report and weep! We have loans, FDI, natural resources and the best politicians money can buy. We fail! If we asked Norman Manley he might say that “politics is dreams, economics is bread and few dreamers can bake”. The skill sets to achieve political independence are not the same as for economic independence. If we continue to elect lawyers, teachers, trade unionists, academics as MPs – the best paid job they ever had – we will fail. We elect MPs with the wrong CV, yet no one makes the connection! I wrote last year that Lee Kuan Yew was exceptional; a shrewd intuitive manager, lawyer, now retired revered father of Singapore’s prosperity. When the history of our 60-plus years of self-government is written, Norman Manley will be our peerless visionary and Edward Philip George Seaga our best in statecraft. We do not know what Bruce believes so Norman Manley’s pedestal is safe, but can Bruce pip Eddie by leading us to economic independence? Politics is quite Machiavellian, isn’t it? We rely on miscreants to get us progress! The tank is full and all the indicators are now right. Your move, Bruce!

This is the third time since 1962 that we have a window of opportunity to build prosperity – economic independence. We are stable – interest rate, inflation, FX, reserves, credit, key labour contracts; IMF and Mrs Clinton’s seal of approval – we are in pole position! Can the Bruce and Shaw duo do it? We want to leave the dunce corner in the region! Incidentally, Bruce, what did you bag in Paraguay? Be a sport!

While we await Bruce’s and Audley’s instructions, here is my two cents’ worth:

* Put $bs into food production, processing and manufacture, because if they won’t work now they can’t work ever. Bruce, you are still PM so show us your plan and get cracking on it!

* We must finalise access to the US and EU markets but as every country wants to get in, let’s change tack and get access to 4 per cent of these markets in conventional goods – this would triple our GDP.

* Our priority must be full access to the 40-million market of our neighbours and give them full access to ours. The world is not after this, and If our paper converters can sell toilet paper to 42.8m instead of 2.8m we will get jobs and Dove quality instead of sandpaper – I am sitting on the edge!

* Incentivise producers to modernise and expand for export not an increment but a multiple of local consumption – this is risk! Too many are used to small market, big mark-up! Does JMA have the cojones? Offer an energy tariff to mega exporters who tool up for 3X local market. To top up output by 50 per cent for export is peanuts! We need new tax regimes. If a firm sells 1m fizzy drinks locally and wants to produce 5m for export, give them the breaks! Tax the pimps, reward risk takers!

* Incentivise firms as Grace, W&N, Producers, etc, to be the “mothership” to take local brands global as they are into 20 or 30 markets, know the supply chain, merchandising and the value propositions. When a little man talks about going to the US with a roots wine, I despair! If Grace is into, say, 1,000 supermarkets worldwide and already sourcing globally, why can’t designers trust them to develop a couture division and represent local quality brands on their network?

* Study value-added service chains and negotiate concessions with the US etc – they cost nothing. I tried to get ministers interested in a fully secured local hub of US post office to no avail. We were on bid for the National Geographic magazine and Playboy print contract for a client – some 7,000 jobs, but they had to be close to a US postal hub to dump trailerloads of monthly mail to members worldwide. We just need one insightful deal at a time! Bruce, where are your thinkers?

*Ask PM Lee Hsien of Singapore to second a dozen top civil servants and give them a free hand to take ours down the path to prosperity. Lee Kuan Yew told us years ago that if he had our resources he would have built his country’s prosperity in half the time. We heard but did not have the smarts to make the logical request to him! Show us! We should publicly shame our leaders; they should give back the titles and honours they gave themselves and their cronies and pay the Jamaican people reparations. Forty-nine years in the wilderness is too much! Stay conscious, my friend!

Caricom

Cricket, once the shining model of West Indian unity is now the nub of regional disunity. Meantime the saga of free movement continues – five months for fingerprints, degree transcripts, references, interviews for spouse and children here was bad; our lady now has to do the same thing for Barbados and the added police reports for all the countries – Guyana, JA, USA, UK where she lived and got degrees means that eight to nine months is standard processing time. If you have no degree you don’t qualify in CSME and her Harvard MBA is no help. Bro Carrington would say, “This is hell in a handcart!”

Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants currently on assignment in the UK.

franklinjohnston@hotmail.com