IT is year’s end — a good time to reflect on the idea that neither PhDs, including our elite Rhodes scholars, lawyers, doctors, engineers, businesspeople, or politicians, are exempt from expectation of basic logic and intellectual honesty. We could, for example, count all the reasons some Cubans try to flee communist Cuba in rickety boats, and those from capitalist Jamaica do not.

The most basic one would be that, with a much shorter distance to the United States mainland, the Cubans have a far better chance at getting to their destination than Jamaicans would. Another would be that United States policy on Cuban boat people: If they make it to shore, amnesty is guaranteed. No such consideration exists where Jamaicans are concerned. Where poor Jamaicans are concerned, it certainly would not be because life is so good in our paradise. Most of the thousands who visit the United States Embassy every year are trying to escape something, and the hundreds of thousands living in shanty towns, or on gully banks across the country, would jump at the very first opportunity. Look out for the migration to Cuba as soon as the opportunity allows.

On the issue of Cuba’s successes and failures under the leadership of Fidel and Raul Castro, there will be debates over what outweighed what from now to infinity. I learned, a long time ago, that when it comes to issues of ideologies, commonsense/pragmatism usually does not reside at either end of great divides, but somewhere near the middle. I am not the one, therefore, to defend Cuban communism. However, I am fascinated by Cuba’s trajectory, compared to ours over the same time span, from the early 1960s to the present. Cuba took the socialist path, and along with it the United States embargo, preventing effective trading with one of the world’s largest markets as well as other countries. Cuba survived that and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which, prior to 1990, had been its largest trading partner and benefactor. Jamaica, on the other hand, has been a free and democratic country, unencumbered by any of the constraints facing Cuba, and with one of the best brand recognitions in the world per capita, but we trail Cuba significantly on every single development marker.

In 2013, of a population of 11 million, Cuba recorded 563 homicides; Jamaica, trending downward recorded, 1,133. Cuba’s literacy rate is 98 per cent compared to our 88 per cent, placing Cuba at number 9 of 215 countries, and Jamaica at 137. Cuba’s infant mortality rate is 4.83 deaths per 1000 births, compared to Jamaica’s 14 per 1000 births, placing them at 28 of 194 countries and Jamaica at 72. Cuba’s life expectancy at 77. 87 puts them at 37 of 194 countries surveyed, while Jamaica’s 73.44 puts us at number 88.

There are a couple of Jamaican schools named after Cuban heroes; they were gifts to us from the Cuban people. Their health care professionals have been our fallbacks on numerous occasions, including currently, with them helping us to prepare for a possible case of the Ebola virus. This newspaper, in its editorial, December 10, titled, ‘Must Caricom-Cuba relations be always about begging?’ noted the imbalance in the relationships between Cuba and countries like Jamaica: “The agenda centred on the theme of co-operation”, it said, “a euphemism for Cuba’s generous assistance to the region’s social and economic development through programmes in health care, education, human resources, sport and disaster management.”

The facts should count for something, among literati in particular, when one considers that integrity is, among other considerations, “a disposition to develop and maintain convictions in an epistemically responsible way, self-awareness of the quality of one’s judgement in matters of conviction; and a disposition to do justice to one’s convictions in action.” Unfortunately, most of us are perpetually challenged by its demands. I believe, though, that a reasonable education should grant all of us more than a passing acquaintance with what integrity means, and it should challenge us to act in consort.

This clearly is one of the failures of our education system and it manifests itself in all kinds of ways. This is why it is so easy for people to sell us a six for a nine with every expectation that we will buy.

So Professor Trevor Munroe, with so many kinds of questions that could be posed on his actions over many years, emerges as the doyen of integrity. Somehow he has become a primary influencer of an anti-corruption Bill, where once again, the Jamaican taxpayer gets the short end of the stick; that of being called upon to potentially fund political campaigns, but to not be privy to which individuals or organisations will continue to manipulate the process through our quid pro quo culture, which is the very definition of political corruption.

I will not say this is warped thinking because that would just not be sufficient to describe this fundamental contradiction. I will say instead that only a master manipulator would attempt or succeed at selling this to the public as a good thing, and only the most gullible will accept this as anything more than hogwash.

Munroe, I believe, would be far more credible if his work on integrity would emphasise transparency and include support for a truth commission to investigate past atrocities committed in the name of politics in Jamaica. A truth and reconciliation (or justice commission) is needed to help the country understand past wrongdoing by government, or non-State actors, to help lay the foundation for a more just society, to prevent revisionism, and to serve as a reference point for future generations. Numerous countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, Morocco, Peru, and Panama and Chile, have adopted this approach. In the name of integrity and all that is just, we should too.

I wish for us clarity, courage and a blessed and prosperous 2015.

Grace Virtue, PhD, is a social justice advocate.