Dear Editor,

With the prospects of a new national election on the horizon, both major political parties have been cautiously putting forward proposals to help build the new Jamaica. Most of the proposals so far seem little more than schemes to muddle through the present situation until some miracle rescues the country. But the age of miracles has long gone. So the elites of Jamaica had better start some serious thinking about how they will make the present conditions better.

Building a new Jamaica is not a one-time thing, a simple act like God making the world in seven days and resting forever. Rather it is a never-ending process that requires unrelenting attention. It will take time. It is like building a house. At first the site is simply a collection of building materials; then slowly the desired house is designed and patiently constructed. At a certain point the occupants can move in, but without constant maintenance the house eventually crumbles to dust. So is it with nation states.

The new Jamaica needs an integrated plan to reform everything — social conduct, politics, economics, and social organisation. The country needs self-sustaining productive entities that provide elastic and meaningfully rewarding employment as well as economic contributions to support the basic infrastructure. A good plan will designate the order of priority and the optimal capacity of operational needs. The planners must calculate how many people should be in agriculture, what products are best made locally and what protections are need to insulate local producers from unfair foreign competition. Jamaica must eat most of what it grows and grow most of what it eats. That much is self-evident.

More difficult is determining the best public policies for a civil society that respects the rule of law and lives in harmony with the international community. For this the country needs a number of small specialised institutes and think tanks that focus on problems and offer a number of options that calculate carefully the benefits and costs of each option both on a long- and short-term basis. Such institutes and think tanks need to be independent of the government and the business elite, yet be able to anticipate the needs of both. If they are good their services will help underwrite the cost of their operations.

If these simple suggestions seem fanciful to Jamaican politicians, then let them ask the embassies from Barbados, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic just how they go about planning for their future. Not all Caribbean countries are mendicants with a sense of entitlement.

John Barry

Spanish Town

St Catherine