Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water. — Miguel de Cervantes

THREE of the numerous email I received last week in response to my article ‘How can Jamaicans stand such times and live?’ made me realise even more that there is a seismic sea wave — also called tsunami — that is rapidly engulfing this land of wood and water.

No amount of obfuscation, pontification or reciting of cherry-picked, politically convenient, and/or incorrect statistics by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and other ministers of this stale Administration can dilute the fact that thousands of Jamaicans are fetching hell, just trying to pay their bills, buy food, pay bus fare, rent, and purchase medication. Thousands across the length and breadth of Jamaica simply are not able to meet their obligations.

This Administration does not seem to understand the purpose for which it was elected. Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, on July 4, 1776, identified the core purpose of government. He said: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Doubtless, some readers and the paid and unpaid spin doctors are going to jump and say Jefferson was talking about white men. Yes, you are right. I am, however, talking about the statement’s present application as the ethos of what is called government in America and in many other liberal democracies.

Governments are instituted to secure and ensure citizens’ rights so they can ‘pursue happiness’ within the agreed ambits of the Rule of Law. The emails below testify to the realities of thousands in this country. The contents make me wonder if this Administration understands that thousands of Jamaicans are being prevented from pursuing happiness because of its inability to grow the economy by upwards of five per cent per quarter, failure to protect Jamaicans’ right to life and liberty, access to health care in a timely manner, collecting citizens’ garbage patterned on international standards, and I could continue on and on.

Email #1:

Thanks for assisting in highlighting the sad state Jamaica is in. I graduated from NCU nearly two years now and cannot find a job. My parents were expecting that I, the first in my family to attend university, would have come back to be their economic lifeline. Sadly, I have been unable to fulfil that expectation. It’s not for want of sending out resumes. I comb the papers and the Internet at the parish library four days a week looking for opportunities even outside my field of communications. No luck!

My self-esteem is almost dashed. The Students’ Loan Bureau calls me almost every week. I have now started to feel almost as if I have robbed a bank. Maybe I feel this way because I was grown up in a family where my parents taught that a man must always pay his debts. But, how can I? I would love to start a business — yes, I have a few ideas — but since my parents mortgaged almost everything they had to send me to school, there is nothing left to use as collateral. Sometimes our family cannot even afford to eat what some Jamaicans might still call a ‘good’ Sunday dinner. My father is a mechanic and my mother a dry goods businesswoman scarcely make enough to pay the recurrent bills.

I am now wondering whether I cheated my parents by going to university. Is it that I have failed Jamaica or it that Jamaica has failed me?

BB

Email #2:

Things are harder than you described. I graduated from HEART some two years now and cannot find a job. My training in foods now seems to have been wasted. I have applied to almost every hotel, restaurant, even cook shop, you name it, without any luck so far. I look through the newspapers daily and check the online jobsites as often as my church sister will allow. I would love to start a business, but money to begin I don’t have. I have a child, and yes, that is my fault I blame no one for that. All I need is a chance, no handouts; just a chance to do an honest job.

I heard the prime minister saying on the news that hundreds of jobs were created since year. I would love to know if any of these jobs are still available and where. You see I am willing to live anywhere in Jamaica where there is a job so that I can feed my child and give something to my mother who is now dying of cancer.

LY

Email #3:

That 1929 song you used in your article captured my reality. I lost my job 11 months come next Friday. The bank is threatening to repossess their house. I now owe four months’ payment. My life has been just a living hell. If you want to know the secret to destroying a human being, I have found it. Just place a man who believes in taking care of his responsibilities in the position of being out of job and out of pocket. Having to depend on friends and relatives for handouts makes me feel smaller than an ant.

All my qualifications and training in chemical engineering seem to be worth nothing in this economy. Luckily, my wife still has her job, but earns far less, far less, than I did. I am vigorously trying to complete the process to go Canada.

I made the fatal error to return to Jamaica four years ago when I completed my studies in the UK. My brother warned me, but I did not listen. I wanted to build Jamaica. Goodbye, Jamaica.

TS

While I advised the three writers and some others to keep fighting the good fight I still agonise whether I was trying to install false hope in people who were genuinely hurting real bad. Life in this country, according to a friend of mine, is a puzzle within an enigma.

Lloyd B Smith

On the matter of puzzle and enigma, recent utterances of Lloyd B Smith, member of parliament for Central St James and deputy speaker of the House, seem increasingly to resemble those of someone involved in inelegant tomfoolery. For example, on August 21, 2014, the Jamaica Observer carried an article with the headline ‘We can’t continue like this’; Downtown MoBay spells chaos, says Lloyd B Smith.

The story informed that Lloyd B said the resort city was being overrun by prostitutes, vendors and rogue taxi operators; “at nights the entire city becomes something that we ought not to be proud of”.

Newsflash, Mr Smith, we all know the problems of Montego Bay. Repeating them to us does not solve them. You are a legislator, you were elected to help put policies and programmes in place to solve these issues. Smith promises a meeting with the mayor to ‘discuss’ the issues — that’s a cruel joke on the people. Why does a legislator have to meet with the mayor, whose job it is to attend directly to the proper care of the city, to point out the problems? This is the kind of nonsense that passes for what many in this Administration call ‘joined-up government’.

Then in last week’s Sunday Observer I saw a story: ‘Police culture will result in more Mario Deanes — Deputy House Speaker’. Here again, Smith seems to be missing the mark. What I want to hear from you, Mr Smith, is what you have done in three years to ensure that the police culture is so affected that there are no more Mario Deanes.

Was Mr Smith giving a political performance at Mario Deane’s funeral or was it just political theatre? I thought he would have used the opportunity to say to the gathering that he would be going back to parliament to do all in his power to assist with the passing of laws to ensure that the life and liberty of Jamaicans are protected and that when the State runs afoul of those rights assured penalties and consequences would flow. Like his wardrobe misfortune in Parliament some time ago, Smith’s misunderstanding of his role as a legislator is exposed every time he opens his mouth.

Wilmot ‘Motty’ Perkins

I would not want the month of September to end and not say something in remembrance of Wilmot Perkins the late ‘king of talk back programmes’ in Jamaica. Perkins was born in Portland on September 3, 1931. He died February 10, 2012. Perkins attended Titchfield and Calabar high schools. He spent his entire life in the cause of journalism.

He began his radio career hosting the programme What’s your grouse? on RJR in 1960. He then took a break from the airwaves a few years later to go into farming, but returned to radio in the 1970s as host of Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation’s popular call-in show Public Eye. He later hosted Hotline on RJR and then Straight Talk on KLAS FM 89, before hosting Perkins on line on Hot 102 FM. In April 2002, he took his show to Power 106 FM. This show became the ‘poor man’s university’.

Ian Boyne indiated recently that Wilmot Perkins, Morris Cargill, John Hearne, David DaCosta — the then Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — along with Cedric Lindo, were all partisans who exhibited unfairness and unjustifiable bias in their commentary. Contrary to what Boyne said in last Sunday’s Gleaner I believe that Perkins was intellectually the finest journalist this country has produced to date. He had an agile mind, an encyclopaedic memory, and a comprehensive grasp of myriad topics, local, regional and International. Earlier he wrote: “Motty was like a reincarnation of the ancient cynic philosopher Diogenes, pouring contempt on the sacrosanct mores of the society. How ironic it is, therefore, to see all these worshipful, in some cases cultic, tributes to Motty; some coming from journalists who are supposed to be trained in scepticism and shorn of sentimentality. It does not honour the memory of the outstanding warrior journalist and guerrilla commentator whose motto was ‘take no prisoners’.”

Clearly the Boyne-types never really read the writings and/or listened to the talk programmes of Perkins. And if they did, they evidently did not understand what they read or heard.

I wish to remind the Boyne-types that it was David DaCosta who exposed the sordid Green Bay Massacre in 1978; those involved and the political objectives behind unemployed young men being lured from their South Side Community [then a JLP enclave in a PNP constituency of Central Kingston], with the promise of work that they were told would have yielded $3,000 [a hell of a lot of money then] per week. I wonder if that is what qualified DaCosta as one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Morris Cargill, John Hearne, even after his conversion, and Cedric Lindo produced some of the finest writing ever printed in The Gleaner. What I want the Boyne-types to do is point where Perkins, Cargill, Hearne, DaCosta, and Lindo said things in their articles that were false.

Perkins had views on various matters. I give credit here to Joanne Simpson who wrote an article printed on April 28, 2002 for many of the direct quotes used. He believed in the ability of women to lead. On self-reliance, leadership and development he said: “As black people, we need to understand why five white faces and one Japanese represent the Group of Six (the six leading nations of the world). Why did Europe go to Africa and not Africa go to Europe? What enabled the Europeans to dominate for 500 years? These are the questions to which we should seek answers. We need to understand the principles of leadership and the underpinning of what propels a once underdeveloped nation like Singapore (the size of St James) to move from a poor Third World country to a First World country with a per capita income of US$30,000. While Jamaica, which Singapore once used as a model of development, now has a per capita income of US$1,500 or less. We need to have the vision to understand the strategy to follow the dictates necessary to move forward.”

On the intellectual responsibility Perkins said: “Beethoven didn’t start where the first musician started. The Internet is not a new idea. It is as a result of the accumulated knowledge and experience of thousands of years. If we do not educate our children, we are depriving them of developing their potential as human beings. We have to respect the principle of value-added. We are suffering from intellectual poverty. Our intellectuals should be helping us to understand our world and they are not performing that function.”

As to whether he was a ‘guerrilla commentator’ who took no prisoners, Perkins said: “People do not have to fear me unless they are on a bad wicket. If they are confident they will call me. If they have doubt, they might find it embarrassing.”

Perkins was known to help student journalists — I was one of many beneficiaries. He employed me at the start of my second year at CARIMAC as a researcher. I later worked with him as a producer.

Doubtless, the Boyne-types will soon relegate my writings as belonging to the category of the ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ — if I am

so favoured.

Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. —  Mark Twain

Garfield Higgins is an educator and journalist. Comments to higgins160@yahoo.com