MOVED by recent poll results showing that a majority of Jamaicans believe that we would have been better off had we remained a colony of Britain, some academics with too much time to dabble in esoterics have been lamenting our ‘lack of patriotism’ and need to concentrate on an ill-defined notion called nation building.

According to some, if the average citizen does not first have nation building as an objective, everything else will fail. I say hogwash!

First, every poll done since the late 1970s has indicated that a majority of Jamaicans would jump at the chance at securing a US visa and leaving Jamaica. Consistently, more than half have always believed that this country would have been better off had we remained a colony of Britain.

The head of the typical household in Jamaica and the adults in that household do not all get up in the mornings and declare that they are out to build a nation. If they have a means of income, that is their first priority in order to keep the household in a state of economic viability.

In this process, nation building is a by-product of everyone’s daily attempt to earn bread. It is the duty of that entity called government to facilitate this process and to properly co-ordinate the efforts of all into nation building. Government has as its first duty, the maintenance of law and order. At the same time, it must ensure that the structures are in place to create an educated population.

The next natural step in the process of nation building is that attempt to ensure that the national economy is viable enough to absorb as much of our educated and professionally trained people in a world where advanced economies are competing for that specific workforce.

At some stage and with numerous other physical structures and social amenities in place, that critical level of civility will occur to allow us to brand ourselves as a viable people able to compete with any other people anywhere in the world.

Some believe that fixing education and getting the economy right create a chicken-and-egg conundrum. We know that it takes money and human will to allow everyone the best shot at a good, basic education but we also know that educated and trained people and entrepreneurship are the key factors in building an economy.

Knowing that the chicken and the egg are present, conventional wisdom is that, having failed to deliver a quality education system to the vast majority of our people, we have no other choice but to continue tweaking it while trying to create an investment-friendly country.

When our people say that we would have been better off had we remained a colony of Britain they are simply applying a pragmatic approach by accepting that governments since 1962, the time of our independence, have failed to move this country economically forward and that much more could have been achieved.

If the geopolitical ballgame had not changed in the aftermath of Britain’s involvement in World War 2, and we were still a colony, the view is that Britain would have invested too much pride in one of its colonies to have it run down socially and economically as Jamaica is at present.

Why have we not rioted?

When I first visited Washington, DC as part of a team of 26 international journalists invited by the US Government on a 10-day, three-city tour of activities leading up to the first presidential debate in 2008, I was quite surprised to see men and women outside the gates of the White House with placards and laptops, openly denouncing (through the placards) the occupant — George W Bush.

It dawned on me then that no Jamaican in his right mind would dare attempt anything like that at the gates of Jamaica House. The police would be called in and heads would be busted. If my memory serves me right, JLP councillors marched on Jamaica House in 2006 in protest against the lack of local government funds needed for fixing roads after heavy rains and as they marched up Hope Road, more than 100 metres from Jamaica House, they were tear-gassed.

Presently there are severe tensions in Greece and other capitals in Europe in response to hard-nosed austerity measures designed to stave off total bankruptcy of those countries. Much hangs in the balance as people have taken to the streets in protest, burning vehicles and creating what, for any government anywhere, must be a socio-political nightmare. The security forces even used tear gas against the demonstrators.

Prior to the 2007 elections, while prices of grain, staples and other commodities such as building materials had shot up by significant percentages, there were riots in many capitals throughout the world. In Jamaica, we drank our rum, smoked our weed, went to church, watched the rioting on TV, then rolled over, had sex, and went to bed.

It is my view that many of our people who have been left out of the formal economy have survived through those times and right throughout the global recession because of their ability to hustle and scuffle. I also hold the view that a country has to tap into a certain level of social cohesiveness and have a fervent belief in its freedoms before its people will take to the streets in mass protest.

In Jamaica’s past, even up to the April 1999 gas riots, it has mostly been our political parties who have ridden the early wave of public dissatisfaction and claimed the protests as their own. Left to themselves, in Jamaica, those who would want to take to the streets at the drop of a hat, so to speak, are those who are unemployed, unemployable, powerless and desirous of ‘bombing a church’ (to use Marley’s description in Talking Blues as a man coming to the end of his tether and wanting to bust loose).

Frankly, were I in such a position, I would have been the first on the streets blocking roads, burning tryes and asking others, ‘A whey wi a defend?’

Some believe that because we are a tropical country there is really no such state as ‘starvation’. Mangoes, breadfruit, ackee and other provisions can be had through scuffling and hence it is quite possible that if a man is able to fill his belly, a ‘walk-foot man’ protesting a gas price increase will soon want to go home before the police come out in full force.

It is said that we lost 100,000 jobs from the early days of the recession in 2008 till now. And still, we have not rioted? How do we do it and how do those householders who lost their jobs among the 600,000 households in Jamaica survive on a daily basis?

I can remember leading a team of interviewers in the strife-torn community of Homestead in Spanish town in 1995 and watching a teenage girl cross a pockmarked road after she had asked me for a few dollars. I don’t remember how much I gave her, but it was not much. She crossed the road and stopped by a roadside vendor and purchased a bulla. After that she called out to her friend, ‘Jackie, yu nuh waan piece?’

Jackie crossed the road and as the girl pushed the cheap sweet cake towards her, Jackie broke off a piece. They both walked away munching on bits of the single bulla. A lot of sharing takes place in our urban, inner-city settings and in the rural areas it is still standard for neighbours to share, though not to the same degree as say, 40 years ago.

The JLP Government must thank its lucky stars that our people are either in a wait-and-see mode, have made up their minds politically or are in the perennial mood of not expecting too many deliveries from the political and governmental systems. It should also be glad that the Opposition PNP has not yet signalled that it has formulated any significant message to place before the people at this time.

What cannot be left out of the equation is the exponential increase in telecommunication and the speedy passage of information to huge numbers of people at a time via social networks like Facebook. While I am not a fan of Facebook (too many religious evangelisers and bored people playing games or massaging their egos), there is no doubt that a significant percentage of our people are aware of what is taking place on the international scene.

Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller runs the risk of trying to convince that 2011 cohort by utilising political marketing that died sometime in the 1970s.

What does Bobby Montague carry to the agriculture & fisheries ministry?

HE was among the very first graduates of the School of Agriculture at Hope Gardens, which morphed into the Jamaica School of Agriculture and the College of Agriculture, Science and Education (CASE).

Among the pioneering students he was the valedictorian in that year. For years he was a successful banana farmer in St Mary. At one time he was the chief agronomist for Bayer’s agricultural operations in Jamaica and at another time he was an agronomist for another German firm’s operation in Jamaica — BASF.

According to Montague when we spoke by telephone last Thursday, “I grew up around the fishing industry and have first-hand knowledge of the problems facing fishers and where the industry must move towards.”

I must confess that when I received the news that he was moving to head the agriculture & fisheries ministry I thought to myself, what does he know about the industry apart from being a banana man?

“In my Constituency Development Fund (CDF) I have used much of the resources to increase the genetic pool of pigs in St Mary,” he said. “There was too much inbreeding and where sows were used to having 16 piglets, they were having seven and eight. What I will have to do now is take that knowledge to the national stage because we have much room for expansion in pig rearing.”

Another part of his CDF was also used to increase bee rearing in St Mary.

As a past president of the Jamaica School of Agriculture (JSA) – College of Agriculture (COA) – CASE, all known as an OLE Farmer, Montague hopes to have more than a heads-up in networking among key players in the industry while having his nose close to the bulk of the farming community — the small farmer.

Montague was also a past chairman of the PC Bank which specialised in lending money to small farmers.

“My first duty will be to examine the fundamentals and making the move from primary into secondary agro-processing) and value added. I know that I will be concentrating on organic farming with a focus on protecting the fragile environment,” he told me.

“As a former councillor of the Carron Hall division in St Mary, I am very aware of operating in hilly terrain. As a result, I am well aware of deforestation, so now that I am in charge of the ministry, that will be another of my focal points,” he added.

Montague also said that he would be taking a close look at the sugar transformation project and the cassava and rice production projects.

I remember when Chris Tufton made the announcements of these projects I was looking forward to hearing more, but they seem to have gone below the radar. One would not expect Minister Montague to have the same approach as Tufton. Montague is more hands-on and one hopes that he will concentrate on building on traditional farming such as increasing orchards in pimento and cocoa, increasing the output of coffee and getting a better deal for our farmers. I would like to see him focus on the production of nutraceuticals and address the perennial matter of soil disease.

I wish him well.

Who can Sharon Hay-Webster turn to?

I have never met or spoken with embattled ex-PNP MP Sharon Hay-Webster, but it does appear that in her recent decision to quit the PNP and represent her constituency as an independent, she is only delaying the inevitable, that of losing the seat to the PNP-designated person placed there.

Like the JLP when it had similar problems, the PNP has shown that it ‘owns’ the seat. To that party, how dare Hay-Webster retain the seat as an independent when it was her efforts backed by the machinery of the PNP which gave her the seat.

On the day she announced her resignation I had enquired if she was amenable to ‘walking across the floor’ and joining the JLP. One powerful JLP minister said, “I believe she would be open to discussions but there would be nothing in it for us. We had our own problems there and at this moment it doesn’t suit us politically to look favourably at her.”

A ballad that is a favourite of mine and was popular in the mid-1960s — Who Can I turn to? — is highly recommended to the lady. I mean her no harm in her time of political despair but the lyrics go like this;

Who can I turn to when nobody needs me?

My heart wants to know and so I must go where destiny leads me

With no star to guide me and no one beside me

I’ll go on my way and, after the day, the darkness will hide me

And maybe tomorrow I’ll find what I’m after

I’ll throw off my sorrow, beg, steal, or borrow my share of laughter

With you I could learn to, with you on a new day

But who can I turn to if you turn away?

With you I could learn to, with you on a new day

But who can I turn to if you turn away?

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