PETER Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J M Barrie. It depicts a mischievous boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang, the Lost Boys, interacting with mermaids, Native Americans, fairies, pirates, and occasionally ordinary children from the world outside Neverland.

Like Peter Pan, Dr Peter Phillips seems to be on a splendid adventure on the small island of Jamaica with his gang of Comrades, making decisions that stretch the imagination but create nothing but further oppression; lacking the impetus to create real opportunities for Jamaica’s lost boys.

Of note in the tale of Peter Pan is the nature of some of the characters he enjoys interacting with — fairies and pirates. Characters who exist outside of reality and are unaffected by, and even benefit from human suffering; only occasionally interacting with the ordinary people.

Though an obvious case of coincidence, it is a parallel universe to present day Jamaica. Dr Peter Phillips seems to be radically out of touch with the suffering of ordinary Jamaicans and only occasionally seems to have a faint idea of the hardships that are being faced by the populace, hence he takes all the time in the world to come up with proper solutions. “No new taxes,” he said, and here we are at the fringe of tax hikes. Why such burden? Only God knows. “No tax on electricity,” declared the now prime minister, yet here we are staring down the double barrel of new energy taxes.

Like the mermaids in the fairy tale, who are hardly ever seen and heard, the prime minister of Jamaica is nowhere to be seen and has perfected the art of being mum while a crippled nation is burning to ash around her.

Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks, and drowning, but they can also be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with humans while scarcely being seen. Comparatively, our media-evading PM has been presiding over an economically shipwrecked country in which many small businesses, individuals, college students, and households are drowning in this horrifying economic storm. And with that she heralds of how much she loves the poor; showing her beneficence with hugs and kisses — a mermaid of kind, indeed.

Our Mermaid and Peter Pan have managed to create an illusion of good governance, especially in light of successfully passing eight International Monetary Fund tests, thus everything seems aglitter like gold with trails of stardust.

The ordinary citizens on the outskirts of the People’s National Party-dominated Neverland need representation. Peter Pan’s gang needs to show genuine concern for the waiting populace by really decreasing the income tax rate by percentage points, removing the tax on electricity, decreasing GCT to 14 per cent, and repealing the rise on fuel prices.

We are doomed to suffer in this blessed country more and more as the cost of living has already gone through the roof. Now we have new “Petered” taxes while salaries are “on ice”.

The occasional concern the fairy tale Peter Pan shows for ordinary people outside his domain is the exact treatment Jamaicans are getting. Dr Peter Phillips will very soon visit us with a burst of genius on the impending occasion of a general election. Pots of curried beneficence will soon be served up to curry favour in order to secure the ever-important vote, and the evasive mermaid will have us entranced by her sweet words yet again before we realise the deception.

Alas, we are not living in a fairy tale. Let’s not fool ourselves and wait on tenterhooks for Peter Pan to give us our long-awaited happily ever after.

drvlllowe@yahoo.com