I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it. — Edith Sitwell

Hours before the United States-led coalition soldiers landed in Baghdad City to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and ostensibly to destroy stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, then deputy prime minister and close advisor to Hussein, Tariq Aziz, gave a most memorable interview. His utterances were acutely delusional. A CNN journalist pointed out to Aziz that the Iraqi forces were surrendering by the tens of thousands. Aziz retorted: “We are winning the war and will win the war. God is great!” “Minister Aziz,” the journalist said (interpreted), “The coalition troops are just a few miles from the capital.” “Don’t worry,” Aziz chimed, “As soon as I finish this interview I will organise my generals to commence the slaughter of those infidels.” The rest, some might say, is history.

‘Chaos! PNP pickle as comrades jostle for positions’ screamed last Sunday’s Gleaner front page in near crimson red. Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s revelations last Sunday at her constituency conference that she leads, and from the front, conjured up memories of that Aziz interview.

“People’s National Party (PNP) president, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, has rejected claims that a lack of leadership is to be blamed for the problems now bedevilling the party.

“Addressing the annual conference of her South West St Andrew constituency Sunday evening, Simpson Miller pointed to a story in The Sunday Gleaner where some political analysts claimed a leadership vacuum in the PNP was the reason for the increasingly bitter contests for the right to represent the party in some seats in the next general elections.

” ‘I hear them say that I am missing in action. All who say that I am missing in action, why them never say the same thing when the JLP [Jamaica Labour Party] having their problems. I don’t have any problems in my party. I am the leader, and I lead from in front, not behind,’ declared Simpson Miller.

“With embattled candidates Raymond Pryce, Damion Crawford, Lisa Hanna and Patrick Atkinson behind her on the stage, Simpson Miller argued that the challenges are part of the democratic process in the PNP. According to Simpson Miller, anyone who thinks she is missing in action needs to have their heads examined.” (Sunday Gleaner, September 13, 2015)

Anyone with a modicum of sense would recognise that the prime minister spoke tommyrot. Portia Simpson Miller’s record as prime minister is replete with failures that may have set this country back for years. The consequences of her absentee leadership, contrary to the inverted reality in her mind, may well have damaged Jamaica’s reputation abroad and worsened, if not concretised untold hardships and suffering on the ordinary masses.

Simpson Miller has the uncomplimentary distinction of being the only head of State of all liberal democracies globally who has not had a one-on-one press conference with local journalists for nearly three years. Is that leading from the front? In self-respecting democracies, it is de rigueur for prime ministers/presidents to have frequent and structured press conferences. Simpson Miller must know that her conspicuous reliance on political amanuenses is not leadership. The prime minister uses senior Cabinet members as an addictive and permanent verbal crutch. This is not leadership.

At the time of writing this article, 863 Jamaicans have been slaughtered since the start of the year. This is a 22 per cent increase over the corresponding period last year. Rural folks all across the country are now shuddering in fear because the Frankenstein of crime has overtaken many of their communities: “Police data shows that from January 1 to September 5 last year, there were 326 murders in rural parishes. but that figure is up this year to 470…” (The Gleaner, September 8, 2015) Where is the leadership to cull the causes of crime, Madam Prime Minister?

Today the country is suffering one of the worst droughts in decades — maybe except for the late 1970s. People in especially the parishes of Kingston, St Andrew, St Mary, St Elizabeth, Clarendon, and Manchester are fetching living hell because their pipes have remained dry, in some cases for months. Poor planning by successive governments is the cause of this predicament. The Mona Reservoir was completed in 1947 and the Hermitage Dam — the smaller of the two storage facilities in the Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA) — in 1927. The population of Kingston and Port Royal, according to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, was 103,713 in 1943, while St Andrew had 120,067 in 1947. Nowadays, the KMA has a population of reportedly 800,000.

Fifty-three years after political independence, hundreds in our commercial and political capital, Kingston, have to take a “forward bath”; meaning scores take a proper shower sometimes three or four days in advance, because if one is lucky that is the interval when there is water in the taps.

Two centuries ago, Jamaica was the wealthiest colony in the British Empire. In 1814, Falmouth, Trelawny, right here in Jamaica, had running water; that is years before New York City in the USA. Today, all over Jamaica people are forced to ‘bathe’ out of veritable ‘teacups’.

According to Mark Barnett, who is now president of National Water Commission, the KMA has eight water trucks. There are reports that people all over the country are using untreated water to cook, drink and bathe. A few unscrupulous hyenas are collecting water from untreated water sources, like the Fresh Water River at Ferry in St Catherine, and selling it at $9,000 and as high as $12,000 per load. All while the trucking of water to hundreds of consumers is unreliable, intermittent at best.

Scores of farmers in the former breadbasket parish of St Elizabeth parish now watch with a broken heart as their crops become sapless, wither and die in the fields. Those who can afford to will buy water for as much as $15,000 per load in those parts from Shylock-type water merchants. All these unnecessary hardships are happening to a country in which water is not in short supply.

” ‘We have done a water resources master plan that looks at the demands across the island and where there are the resources. And our plan indicates that there are adequate resources to meet the demand; however, the development of those resources and implementation of the solutions is the issue.

” ‘In its water resources master plan, the Water Resources Authority has identified exactly where there are water resources that are available for development. We have divided the island into 10 hydrologic basins, and we have done an evaluation of the water resources availability in those basins across the island.

” ‘Basically, what we now have is a very high demand, but less resources on the south coast, while a low demand but high resources on the north coast. In order to meet the shortage of systems, we have to look at how to get the surplus water to the areas with the greater demand. In other words, how are we going to get those resources across the island?’ said Basil Fernandez, managing director, National Water Resource Authority.” (The Gleaner, July 23, 2014)

In the last three years, this Administration has done no major infrastructural work to take the universal solvent from the water-rich north and west to the water-poor south. The last major water project in Jamaica aimed at addressing water disequilibrium in the KMA was the Yallahs Pipeline Project in 1983. Has Portia Simpson Miller led from the front?

Three and half years ago, when the PNP took office, the Jamaican dollar was at $86.78 to US$1. Up to last Wednesday, it was $118.74 to US$1. In an import-dependent economy, the mathematics of how that destroys the earning power of the poor and vulnerable is not rocket science. Each one-dollar devaluation of the Jamaican currency means that our debt skyrockets by billions. These billions will be paid back by the disappearing middle class.

Today, we have a dollar that is worth less than US$0.01. Our debt today is over $2 trillion. Since the PNP took office there has been a 40 per cent devaluation of our currency. What leadership has the prime minister demonstrated to inspire the majority of Jamaicans to dream big, think big, and have new-found hope in our country?

One of the first acts the Portia Simpson Miller Administration performed when they took power on December 29, 2011 was to spend $60 million on luxury SUVs for themselves. What is wrong with that, some with their places reserved at the trough might ask? What is wrong is that Jamaica is a sorely indebted country. If our economy were growing meaningfully and the majority of our people were prosperous it would not matter to me if they bought spaceships. Did Simpson Miller stop this unconscionable act? Did she lead from the front?

Hundreds of millions have been wasted on phantom schemes such as the non-starter technology park and film lot fiasco at the abandoned Goodyear Factory in St Thomas. Jamaica’s reputation has been damaged by mountains of incompetence by numerous ministers in the Portia Simpson Miller Administration. Who has been held accountable? None!

When Phillip Paulwell, minister of science, technology, energy, and mining, bungled and botched the 381-megawatt energy project, he was stoutly defended and embraced by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller in Parliament.

” ‘Let me make it quite clear: I have a minister of energy in place. Unless he does something wrong that would affect and impact the Jamaican people in a serious way and the Government of Jamaica [he will not be fired],’ Simpson Miller said, in responding to a question from Opposition Leader Andrew Holness. (Jamaica Observer, June 4, 2014)

When Dr Fenton Ferguson, minister of health, made little or no preparation for the arrival of CHIKV, his incompetence was subsequently defended by the prime minister. Under Ferguson’s watch there was country-wide suffering, which cost the economy, conservatively, $7 billion and 13 million lost man-hours of production time, according to data from the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica. In any self-respecting democratic country Ferguson would have been history.

When septuagenarian A J Nicholson made the dastardly “flexi-rape” remark in Parliament, he did not resign and the prime minister did not fire him. Nicholson remains the majority leader in the Senate, minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade, and a senior Cabinet minister. Five weeks ago two, Cabinet ministers [minister of women’s affairs and a secretary of state] of Haiti’s coalition government resigned after President Michel Martelly told a woman at a political rally to go in the bushes and have sex. The Cabinet led from the front.

When junior minister Richard Azan was reprimanded in a scathing report by the contractor general, and universally condemned by civil society, he was later reinstated in Nicodemus-like fashion, ignoring howls of protests from all sectors of the Jamaican society. Did the prime minister chastise him?

Last October, the country found out that near $200 million of National Housing Trust funds were used to purchase the Outameni property, ostensibly to establish a kind of ‘Emancipation Park’ in the west — at least that is one of several explanations the country got. The prime minister said she heard about the matter in the media. Only 30 per cent of those who contribute to the National Housing Trust get a housing benefit. Auditor General Pamela Munroe Ellis later delivered a body blow to the wavering stories of the then board.

“The Auditor General’s Department says that the National Housing Trust’s (NHT) purchase of the Orange Grove/Outameni property in Trelawny in 2013 was a buyout of a bad debt owed by the owners of the property to a local merchant bank.

“The decision to purchase the property followed a letter from the owners, Orange Valley Holdings Limited (OVHL), in November 2012, bringing to the attention of the NHT board its indebtedness and urging it to negotiate a buyout of the bank loan covering the realty.” (Jamaica Observer, April 22, 2015)

The NHT falls under the responsibility of the prime minister. What action did she take in light of public outrage? She reappointed Lambert Brown, Sonia Hyman, Percival LaTouche, and Robert Budhan; four members of the board that presided over the cock-up. The Outameni property was advertised a few weeks for sale by a new board headed by one of our most respected civil servants, Dr Carlton Davis.

This Administration spent $350 million to extinguish a preventable fire at Riverton dump and to date over $100 million cannot be properly accounted for at the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA). The prime minister defended the erstwhile CEO of the NSWMA, her close friend and president of the PNP’s Women’s Movement Jennifer Edwards with the words: “She [Jennifer] did not start the fire.”

When Anthony Hylton failed the country with the Krauck and Anchor cook-up, and has overseen the stillborn logistics hub, effectively embarrassing the country, he was given political hugs and kisses by Portia Simpson Miller. Hylton, in real terms, has achieved almost nothing since he was given the portfolio of investment, industry and commerce. Like his colleagues, he has suffered no consequences for his unparalleled incompetence.

“The mandate which Jamaicans gave the People’s National Party on December 29 is a call to action. It is a signal from our people that we, the Government, must earn their trust. It also gives us the opportunity to ease the burdens and the pressures of increasing poverty, joblessness, and a deteriorating standard of living.” (excerpt from Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s inaugural speech, January 5, 2012)

Has this pledge been even remotely honoured by Portia Simpson Miller?

Simpson Miller has been an absentee prime minister and has presided over rank failure. In a self-respecting democracy she would have been forced to resign long ago. Whose head needs to be examined?

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. — Japanese proverb

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