Dear Editor,

During the earlier days our country had two most outstanding leaders of the two major political parties – Sir Alexander Bustamante and Norman Washington Manley.

These leaders were always strident and decisive in their leadership and were people persons; they did their best to unify their parties and bring community values to our country by giving first to Jamaica.

Today, we must challenge current leaders of both the PNP and JLP as to what progress they will make for our country. Though Opposition Leader Andrew Holness had only a two-month stint as prime minister, he too must demonstrate to us if he outlasts his leadership to be PM again. However, we now have a veteran woman politician, Mrs Portia Simpson Miller, who first served as PM in 2006 to 2007, having spent more than a year in office.

She is again prime minister and will be until we have another election, constitutionally due in 2016 – which, of course is not enough time left before PM Simpson Miller makes her mark on her own legacy. Jamaica is at a crucial juncture, where we have seen weakness in the economy and the impact on our precious people. We’ve seen some MPs from both sides of the aisle acting like they have no leadership. Then, we have crime and violence having its own leadership, overtaking the best values from our past leaders — Busta and Norman, as we knew them.

In this economic crunch that the country is going through, we have seen officials acquiring highly expensive vehicles when the nation is in an economic crisis; we have seen some caught up in scams, bribery, and other criminal activities. Also, we continue to see garrison communities. So we ask, where are the voices and the strident and decisive leaders?

It is time for our citizens to demand honesty and integrity from all our leaders. Surely we do not want to set our children bad examples.

There are too many times our beautiful country has been in this abyss, so we must hold our leaders accountable for the distress they place on our society which was built by great men who had vision and saw that we had good morals and values.

Michael Nugent

New York, USA

michaelnugent1@hotmail.com