THERE’S hardly a country that is not plagued by crime, be it major or petty. Despite that reality, the ideal of the majority of people, we believe, is for the country that they call home to be crime-free or, at worst, have negligible crime. After all, without the scourge of crime to worry about, people would be better able to expend their energies on a range of matters that could further improve their lives.

Think, for instance, what a feat it would have been for us had the two pilots who are now attempting to make the first round-the-world trip in a solar-powered aircraft been Jamaicans, and that the aircraft itself was built here in our country.

Even if the mission is not successful, the mere fact that Messrs Andr Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard were able to develop and utilise the technology to make the attempt is impressive enough.

Indeed, it serves as motivation for other people to use technology for human development. In fact, both men are reported as saying that the flight is designed to draw attention to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in December this year when it is expected that the new Kyoto Protocol will be defined.

Messrs Borschberg and Piccard are from Switzerland, a country with one of the lowest crime rates in the world, and which is ranked by the World Economic Forum as having the most competitive economy globally.

We, of course, would love for Jamaica to get to that stage. However, we acknowledge that we have a very long way to go to attain such heights.

The economic hole which we have dug for ourselves over many decades is very deep, and therefore the climb out is long and tedious.

But climb we must, for we cannot continue to subject successive generations of Jamaicans to the hardships that this country has been experiencing for the past four decades.

Against that background, we again urge the Government to resist the temptation to ‘run wid it’, now that we seem to be entering the election silly season. Already we are hearing disturbing talk of an intention to pressure Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips to loosen the purse strings, so to speak, in order that the ruling party can purchase favour with voters.

We hope that this talk is not true. For any such action will erode the economic gains that the country has made over the past two years. As we have said in this space before, we don’t get the sense that Dr Phillips will yield to any such pressure. For he has already earned a solid reputation in the international financial community which, we expect, he will not want to jeopardise, not only for his sake personally, but also for Jamaica.

Having established a good record of meeting the fiscal targets as determined by the International Monetary Fund, Dr Phillips and the Government now need to give greater focus to policies that will generate the type of economic growth that Jamaica enjoyed in the 1960s which, at the time, was one of the highest in the world.

It can be done.