The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

THIS People’s National Party (PNP) Administration has deteriorated far beyond the wildest comprehension of even those who have historically and/or conveniently deluded themselves with the belief that doing the same things, with the same people, in the same ways can achieve different results.

Today, thousands of Jamaicans have awakened from a near delirium-like political state. Why? Man’s basic physiological needs, when unsatisfied, cannot be submerged or subdued inordinately. Inevitably a self-preservation button takes control.

Former Prime Minister Michael Manley, to his chagrin, discovered this universal reality on October 30, 1980. Those who do not suffer with what National Hero Norman Manley called a “corruption of conscience” recognise that a kind of political gangrene has set in on the Portia Simpson Miller Administration. Among other things, this Government does not understand the primary purpose for which it was overwhelmingly elected.

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to the Republican Citizens of Washington Country in 1809, stated the chief reason that most governments exist: “The care of human life, happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

Last Sunday, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, who seems afflicted with near permanent political laryngitis, had a mass meeting in Petersfield, Westmoreland. The parish, she proudly said, is “PNP country”. Murders have increased by 133 per cent in the Westmoreland Division, while 1,022 Jamaicans have been slaughtered since January, a 25 per cent increase over the corresponding period last year.

Many political pundits say Petersfield was the official launch of the People’s National Party’s (PNP) election campaign. A PNP spokesman said last week that there will be three mass meetings. Some election watchers say Simpson Miller will announce the date for the general election at the third meeting planned for Half-Way-Tree Square.

Simpson Miller read almost verbatim from a prepared script. This is yet another confirmation that the prime minister’s ‘best by’ date has passed. Today Simpson Miller is so carefully managed and directed by her handlers that one of her few strengths — an ability to speak extemporaneously on the political stump — has been doused.

She has been reduced to a veritable political mannequin. To the shock of some who continue to behave like the sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the prime minister did not utter a single word about the 18 [now 19] babies that died from illnesses acquired in State-run hospitals. She expressed no sympathies to their families and gave no assurances that specific systems would be quickly set in motion to prevent a similar recurrence.

Simpson Miller came to the prime ministerial perch on a platform of ‘motherliness’. Before becoming prime minister, she spoke repeatedly about “balancing the books, while balancing people’s lives”. Thousands foolishly believed her rhetoric.

Minister of Finance Dr Peter Phillips, to his eternal credit, described the death of the 18 babies, on a radio programme, as a “tremendous tragedy”.

Our Minister of Health Dr Fenton Ferguson spoke in Parliament last Tuesday. Jamaica must never forget this utterance — notwithstanding an apology 24 hours after. “When a baby is born seven months, their organs systems are not well developed… Their immune systems are significantly compromised. So I don’t want anyone to give any impression that these are babies in the real sense. I am talking about neonates versus full-term babies, and that is why they ended up in the nurseries because they have special issues.” The hapless minister with responsibility for information, Sandrea Falconer, told us last Wednesday at a Jamaica House Press Conference that Ferguson experienced a slip of the tongue.

In an address at a ceremony at the Princess Margaret Hospital on Wednesday, October 21, 2015, Dr Ferguson said: “I know a lot of persons out there believe that it is 18 babies or 42 babies who were probably walking around or, in a certain, born well and, therefore, came to the hospital and were infected and died. It is not so. These are babies that were born and had their own challenges by virtue of time of birth and weight.” (RJR News, October 22, 2015) Did Ferguson’s tongue slip here too?

When is a baby a baby “in a real sense”, Dr Ferguson? Ferguson’s line of reasoning is most dangerous. Why? In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler made a related argument about the Jewish people. Those who owned slaves and participated in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade justified their actions with an evil propaganda that Africans were not people.

There is a worrying narrative from some of top health officials in this #deadbabiesscandal. Dr Kevin Harvey, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health, some days ago said “the outbreak of infections in the neonatal units in the hospital is not unusual”. (The Gleaner, October 21, 2015)

It was widely reported last week that: “On September 7, the hospital [UHWI] informed the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Marion Bullock-Ducasse about the outbreaks. Thirteen days later, before a response came from Bullock-Ducasse, a fifth baby died. On September 21, the CMO replied and appointed two officers to follow up to ensure appropriate infection control procedures are in place.” (RJR News, October 22, 2015) How does Bullock-Ducasse explain her actions?

“Chief Medical Officer Dr Marion Bullock-Ducasse says the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) did not tell her it was dealing with a current outbreak of infection in September when it wrote to her.” (The Gleaner, October 28, 2015) She says there was no information about dead babies in the health audit that the ministry has refused to release.

“An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.” (Nicholas M Butler) Ferguson fits this description perfectly as regards his management of the Health Ministry: “The Health Minister Fenton Ferguson is not able to say whether the audit report he ordered into the state of the health sector made reference to dead babies as a result of poor sanitation in Jamaica’s hospitals. ‘I’ll have to check,’ he told Opposition MP Audley Shaw in Parliament this afternoon. Shaw had asked Ferguson whether the audit, yet to be made public, spoke specifically to the issue of dead babies.” (The Gleaner, October 28, 2015)

In the midst of an obvious display of scant familiarity with the operations of his ministry, Ferguson ironically chided Daryl Vaz, member of parliament for Portland Western, for not being as bright as him. What a country!

Simpson Miller displayed convenient amnesia at Petersfield Square 10 days after the scandal broke. Predictably a public backlash occurred. The PNP, in an effort to save face, put forward a fatuous statement that tried to excuse away the formulaic silence of Simpson Miller.

The statement said inter alia: “The love Simpson Miller has for the children of Jamaica — in fact children everywhere — is internationally renowned. And so to even slightly suggest that she is uncaring towards them is absolutely absurd and insulting…The prime minister reasonably cannot at this time comment on the deaths directly because she is waiting for an investigation to be completed and would not want her comments to interfere with such an important process.” (Jamaica Observer, October 27, 2015)

But the tidal wave of public scorn for the silence of prime minister could not be quieted. Her political laryngitis apparently relented and she addressed Parliament last Tuesday.

“Mr Speaker, I’m sure that all of us in this honourable House, on both sides, would have a feeling of sadness for what happened with the children, and I hope that a system will be put in place that this will never happen again. I want to extended sympathies to members of the families, and I hope that the Ministry of Health and the minister will look at the present system and to see what needs to be done [so] that what happened will never ever happen again. Our children are our future and we have a responsibility to ensure the protection of our children and the future leaders of this country. Thank you.” She spoke for a minute and 52 seconds. Relapse?

We have a prime minister whose salt has lost its savour. She is led. She does not lead. This is the reason that the likes of Anthony Hylton, Dr Fenton Ferguson, Robert Pickersgill, Sandrea Falconer, Derrick Kellier, Noel Arscott, Richard Azan, Peter Bunting, Phillip Paulwell, and AJ Nicholson get away scot-free after repeated failures.

From Lower to Upper

The country has slipped down a precipitous slope.

Jamaica woke up last Tuesday to a disgraceful attack on this newspaper by Foreign Affairs Minister A J Nicholson. There is a bitter intolerance for anyone who has an opposite view as regards the government’s position on the Caribbean Court of Justice. Nicholson’s irascible attack on this newspaper reinforced the reality. His crass behaviour in this and previous instances too numerous to mention reiterates his distant acquaintance with the urbane requirements that are de rigueur for the post he holds.

Senator Nicholson’s apology last Wednesday is in sync with Machiavellian strategy. You brutally attack the media and/or your political opponent — as happened when Peter Bunting referred to some Jamaicans as John Crows [scavengers] — you achieve the desired political effect, especially among rabid supporters, then you tender an apology to palliate the general public. This is done over and over in Jamaica because politicians know they will not be forced to resign and/or suffer any likely immediate political consequences. I am not moved by such apologies.

Nicholson in his broadside said: “The Observer produced what they called a front-page editorial on Friday. It’s a prime example of why no country has ever had a referendum on this matter.” Did St Vincent hold a referendum on the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ)? What was the outcome? Other countries in the region have also indicated that the people must decide on the adoption of the CCJ as their final appellate court.

Baldwin Spencer, former prime minister of Antigua, said: “A referendum should be held within all the countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) simultaneously so as to guide the subregion’s approach to full membership of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice…I am of the view that the OECS member states…in seeking to answer this question, most of the constitutions provide for the referendum, I am of the view that we should move to that position together.” Spencer, chairman of the subregional grouping, said. (Caribbean360, June 11, 2014) Senator Nicholson might want to tell us if Gaston Browne, the incumbent, has taken a different position?

Instead of lambasting this newspaper, maybe Nicholson should tell us why, unlike the twin-island republic, Jamaica did not set up a Constitutional Reform Commission. That committee made the following recommendation: “The issue of acceding to the appellate jurisdiction of the CCJ should be the subject of a national referendum.” (December 2013, report page 44) Just in case some were to argue that the new Administration in Trinidad and Tobago could take another route, not so. The new Government does not have the political muscle.

Nicholson might want to read the article entitled ‘CCJ unlikely to replace Privy Council in Trinidad after elections’. (Stabroek News, August 25, 2015)

“The PNM [People’s National Movement] leader, Dr Keith Rowley, was asked how soon his party will table legislation to accept the jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice as its final court of appeal were it to win the September 7 general election. Rowley said a special majority (three-quarters of both Houses of Parliament) is needed to switch from the Privy Council to the CCJ, and that if his party were to get such a majority (33 seats), it would table legislation immediately to make the CCJ the final court of appeal.” Surely Nicholson knows the seat count of the September 7, 2015 general election.

Nicholson and other Government spokespersons have consistently argued that the route of a referendum would politicise the CCJ issue. Is the present brouhaha over the CCJ in the Senate political?

Below are excerpts from a news item carried by Irie FM on October 16, 2015. It illuminates some of the major thinking behind why this Administration does not want a plebiscite on the CCJ:

“Government Senator K D Knight, however, opined that with a referendum there is the possibility of the proceedings becoming highly politicised, as citizens’ votes can be determined by political affiliations rather than reason.

“This comes against the point Senator Mark Golding made during his presentation of what happened in St Vincent when the country decided, through a referendum, to adopt the CCJ as the final court of appeal. This he says became a political war.” Political war? Did that really happen?

If Senator Knight is correct that “citizens’ votes can be determined by political affiliations rather than reason”, then the PNP has no need to worry about the outcome of a referendum. The PNP maintains that this is “PNP country”. Is it that the PNP no longer believes its own propaganda?

The news item said, among other things: “Senator K D Knight states that the citizens of Jamaica have imparted Parliament with the right to make decisions in their best interest.” Does the Jamaican Parliament have an enviable record of decisions in the best interest of the masses?

We have invested US$27 million ($3.24 billion) in the CCJ. Based on recent revelations, it would cost just under $4 million to fund a visit of the Privy Council here; 800 Privy Council sittings could be afforded on the basis of the figures above. How many cases do we send to the Privy Council each year? There is an indecent haste to secure a legacy for Portia Simpson Miller. That is the crux of why this Administration does not want a referendum.

Let the people decide singly; but preferably in a grand referendum to include legalisation of marijuana, repeal of the Buggery Act, plus other foundational legal and social issues.

Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow is too lazy to form an opinion. — Will Rogers

Garfield Higgins in an educator and journalist. Send comments to the Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.