OUR country, in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, is attempting the journey towards development, saddled with massive debt, a poorly educated population, high levels of unemployment, extreme poverty and crime, and high vulnerability to natural and man-made disaster.

Development, said the late Walter Rodney, “is the process of changing from bad to good, from good to better, and from better to best…from a low level at a particular stage to the high level of the particular stage in which there is a positive gain”.

I want to be hopeful too; I just will not lose sight of the fact that it’s a long, hard road, or that much of the difficulties are of our own making. And I am angry sometimes when I see the suffering of the people, the callousness of some of those in charge, and the knowledge that they have little interest in the process, except ego-gratification.

I intend, for example, to follow up on why back-to-school items brought by Shelly-Ann Richmond from the United States for poor children in south Manchester had to be left on the wharf. It is not enough to talk about how the rules have changed or to be suspicious of her motives. There are many children in the area desperately in need, and I will not accept that a solution could not be found to allow her to bring in those goods without it being an excess burden to her. Member of Parliament Michael Peart knows what conditions are like in the area. He should also know who Richmond is. She is not a higgler.

Maturity is a synonym for development; it is not a curse word. It is often used synonymously with age/aging because conventional wisdom suggests that people mature as they age. This is normally true of physical maturity, but not necessarily so intellectually, spiritually or emotionally. Many of us know some Peter Pan characters — adults who refuse to grow up, choosing instead to spend their lives in a psychological place where they do not have to confront the responsibilities of adulthood.

A few of those are in both the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP); overgrown, self-indulgent children in desperate need of adult supervision. Since they can only be liabilities, they need to be directed to vocations more suited to their abilities, rather than public service. It is unfortunate that Raymond Pryce, MP for St Elizabeth North Eastern, who seems to have taken a mature approach to his responsibilities, has been caught up in the recent maelstrom of discontent and will not be representing the people in the next general election.

The high-profile contest for the St Ann South Eastern seat, where Youth and Culture Minister Lisa Hanna is the sitting MP, comes this weekend. A columnist writing in this paper on March 8 this year, laid out the concerns of the constituents, leading to three councillors, Lloyd Garrick, from the Moneague Division; Lydia Richards, from the Bensonton Division; Lambert Weir of the Claremont Division, publicly opposing Hanna. The three made serious allegations about her management of the constituency, forcing the observation that: “…When three out of four councillors take a sitting MP on, and one who is also a minister with close ties to the prime minister, one knows that that storm is simply churning and sucking up the heat to become a full-fledged hurricane.”

“Minister Hanna owes these councillors a quick hearing/meeting and a fleshing out of matters of concerns,” he added. “On the face of it, it cannot be that the minister is right, and three out of her four councillors are wrong. In the spirit of democracy, it is the MP who should admit that she has been outvoted.”

I interviewed Richards to answer the looming question of who she is, besides councillor for the Bensonton Division. She is not a Peter Pan. She is a Kiwanian, an educator, and a social worker trained at the University of the West Indies, with years of service to her birth parish and multiple awards for it. She says she gives back all her councillor’s salary to her division to be used to help the needy. She decided to challenge Hanna, she says, because of the lack of adequate representation and Hanna’s ‘unhelpful attitude’. Hanna has not yet responded to a message asking her to clarify specific allegations.

She has questions to answer regarding her handling of both the constituency and the ministry under her purview, including the absence of a national youth policy highlighted by the Opposition last week. She also needs to clarify the statement she issued relative to the death of a child at Prickly Pole Primary School in her constituency last week. The statement linked the death to a planned demonstration against Hanna protesting her claim that $3 million had been spent paving the schoolyard. However, the child seemed to have died from natural causes. The attempt to link the two, therefore, is unseemly at least, as is the choice to ignore the reasons for the protest and use the death as a red herring.

Participation of children in certain kinds of demonstrations is something that a national youth policy should address.

I wrote a column last year on change management in which I cited Harvard Business School Professor John P Kotter, a leading thinker and author on organisational change management. He argues that effective change management requires, among other key tasks, building the right team with appropriate mixes of technical skills, emotional intelligence and commitment to the job; establishing and framing the vision right, in order to guide the strategy and work of the organisation; and projecting urgency by setting objectives that are clear and relevant with timelines attached.

Communication is the lynchpin. People have to know when rules change, what the new rules are, and what everyone’s responsibility to the process is, and it should be ethical and transactional.

This is true of both government and political parties. It is a core responsibility of leadership and a prerequisite for success.

Grace Virtue, PhD, is a social justice advocate.