JAMAICA has never been serious about tackling crime.

At a fundraising event at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in 2005, Bruce Golding, then leader of the opposition, said the following:

“The number one priority to which we must direct our energies and resources is not on new highways, not even on education — as important as that is. It must be on tackling this monster of crime and violence. It can be done! It requires political will, and when we become the Government we will make the treatment of crime the number one priority of our Government.”

In my speech in New York a few weeks ago I pointed out that the World Bank estimates that if Jamaica could reduce the crime level to that of Costa Rica, it would generate 5.4 per cent per capita GDP growth per year which would increase the income per person by 69 per cent over a 10-year period.

I do not know a single Jamaican who would not welcome a 69 per cent income growth rate, even if it is slightly uneven. Why then are so few people vocal about getting politicians to recognise the crime crisis the country has been facing and force them to do something about it? Why are so few organisations placing any real pressure on successive governments? Why are so many donors to political parties showing that they do not care about the future of the country as a whole?

There is no question that the high crime rate is one of the single biggest growth obstacles in Jamaica. Money spent on private security represents around 1.3 per cent of GDP. If that could be halved, such large sums could be invested in more productive areas of the economy such as retooling and upgrading factories, installing power generation capacity at factories to reduce the cost of energy, expanding into new international markets and training current staff so as to increase our poor productivity.

It is ironic that while as leader of the opposition Golding said: “we will make the treatment of crime the number one priority of our Government”, while after becoming prime minister, crime was never made the number one priority.

In fact, after news came out of the USA recently that surprised some Jamaicans but not all, the international media carried some interesting commentary in their reports. The BBC said that Christopher Coke “enjoyed substantial protection from the ruling Jamaica Labour Party and Prime Minister Bruce Golding” and Al Jazeera said that he “was well known in Jamaica as a businessman who promoted shows and gave strong support to the ruling Labour Party”.

‘Brand Jamaica’ is all over the international news for the wrong reasons again, and this time our politicians are in the thick of it. As leader of the opposition, Golding was quite right that “it requires political will” to tackle “this monster of crime and violence”, but when he had the best chance any sitting government has ever had, he squandered the opportunity and has now set himself and his administration up for the international press, rightly or wrongly, to point fingers at what he admits he sanctioned.

Not enough Jamaicans seem to realise the real crisis the country faces. It is not an education crisis, it is not an economic crisis, nor is it a debt crisis. We face a leadership crisis, and have faced one for decades.

Why is it that more Jamaicans have not stood up and called a spade a spade instead of being blatantly partisan and supporting bad governance by both parties? Maybe it is because we are too ashamed to admit what the rest of the world says and reads about Jamaica.

The latest World Bank publication sent to me was Jamaica Country Economic Memorandum published on May 26, 2011. It is what potential investors are reading before they decide to do business in Jamaica.

Here are some key quotes from the World Bank regarding crime that the rest of the world is privy to:

* intentional homicide rates are higher in the Caribbean than in any other part of the world. Jamaica has the region’s worst record;

* between 1988 and 2008, the homicide rate grew 3.5 times, from 17 to 60 per 100,000 people;

* Jamaica is one of the most crime-prone places in the world.

High crime rates drive the brain drain, pushing away trained professionals, entrepreneurs and university graduates. High crime rates drive away businesses as investors seek out safer countries like Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and so on. Yet there has never been a concerted effort amongst the public, the media and the private sector to push for a real effort to fight crime.

Some say that the solution is to address poverty, but the facts do not support that idea. Between 2003 and 2007, poverty in Jamaica declined from 21 per cent of the population to 9.9 per cent, extreme poverty fell from 6.6 per cent to 2.9 per cent and inequality improved. Some of the lower segments actually gained more than average which simply means that the little growth benefited everyone.

Still, crime continued to escalate during that period, clearly indicating that reducing poverty did not help to reduce crime. It could be said that reducing poverty did prevent the crime rate from being higher, but we need crime to go down, not grow slower. The PNP has a poor record when it comes to dealing with crime when we look at the growth of the murder rate under its watch.

Some Jamaicans will point to the reduction in crimes since the limited state of emergency last year in the wake of the Christopher Coke extradition saga. But these very same Jamaicans rarely admit the obvious fact that had Prime Minister Golding and some in the JLP got their wish, no extradition request would have been signed then put before a court of law, and therefore no state of emergency would have been called, thus no drop would have been seen in the crime rate.

It was not political will that tackled crime in Jamaica in a serious way for the first time, it was popular will. The people simply demanded it and they got it because in a properly functioning democracy, the politicians serve the people and are supposed to represent the interests of the country.

Neither major political party has demonstrated the political will to tackle crime, but they do not deserve all the blame. Jamaicans in general have not shown the will to tackle crime and corruption, neither has the private sector nor the media.

In fact, in other countries that seriously want to address the issues of crime and corruption, after what transpired in 2010, the citizens would be up in arms demanding that every single cent donated to a political party should be public information.

Transparency is the simplest cure for what ails Jamaica. If political parties and candidates accept money from pPonzi schemes, if political parties and candidates accept money from alleged criminals, if they accept money from companies that get government contracts, the public has a right to know because these are the people who will be representing the country on the world stage.

If private sector companies donate to a political party and then don’t speak out when there are obvious lapses of judgement, such as defending a criminal, then the people have the right to know if such companies and the management are silent because they gave money to that party and it is in their personal interest to be silent.

No international media house should ever again be able to write that a criminal was protected by or donated to any politician or political party because it only further tarnishes the image of a country that is seen as very corrupt. The only ways to ensure that the country is never again subject to such embarrassment is to have transparency in the funding of political parties (either release the list of donors publicly like the USA requires or allow for public funding of parties) and to start prosecuting politicians for corruption.

Lee Kuan Yew said: “When ministers commanded the respect and confidence of the people, public servants were also able to hold their heads high and make decisions with confidence.”

That is the fundamental difference between Singapore and Jamaica. In Jamaica, our government ministers, past and present, rarely command the respect and confidence of the people inside and outside the country, thanks to the constant scandals involving politicians.

We can count on one hand how many politicians and big businessmen have been prosecuted in Jamaica. Justice is obviously a joke and no amount of cameras in the courtroom will change that fact. There is one set of laws for the “little man” and another set for the “big man” which must stop.

There is lots of blame to go around. My generation has not yet got hold of power to make a difference from inside but too many of us have been silent, or worse, do not care. Too many prefer to focus on the next party and the latest phone instead of the future of the country that they live in.

The generation before me, Generation X, have grasped some power but they mostly are either cut from the same dirty linen of those before them or they put money over morals and stay silent.

My parents’ generation are the ones still in power in politics, the media and the private sector. Instead of critiquing that generation I will ask a simple question: Is this the kind of Jamaica that you will be proud of leaving to your children and grandchildren and if not, what are you going to do about it?

David Mullings is the first Future Leaders representative for the USA on the Jamaican Diaspora Advisory Board. He can be found on Twitter at twitter.com/davidmullings and Facebook at facebook.com/InteractiveDialogue